X1000 Series
by Anime-Ronin
Summary: Buffy meets Terminator 2: Judgement Day - kiss Canon goodbye, people. Sequel being rewritten - read AN1 in S2 C1, please.
1. Story 1

X-1000

Author: Anime Ronin

Rating: R

Summary: BTVS meets Terminator 2: Judgment Day – run and hide right now, because this is going to get VERY ugly for certain parties.

Disclaimer: I own nothing.

AN: Kiss Canon goodbye – massive OOC here, especially with Willow, Joyce and Xander.

Joyce smiled at Xander, who stood before her in a uniform of a police officer, dark blue with a shield, gun belt and most of the accessories – he looked just like one as she let him in and trailed a look down his back, wondering if her daughter was blind in passing up such a delicious-looking young man, "So, Xander, going as an officer of the law, I see – are those handcuffs real?"

Xander blushed lightly at the tone she used and Joyce marked up a point, thinking that she still had it, until he smiled slightly at her, "Why Joyce, if you wanted to find out, all you had to do was ask me – I'll give you a very good demonstration on just how real they are." She felt herself blush slightly as he flirted right back with her and her daughter walked down the stairs.

"Mom! Stop flirting with Officer Harris – I'm not sure I'd be able to post your bail." Her daughter was dressed as a noblewoman and Joyce, while she was not sure why, knew there was a man involved, especially with the way Xander rolled his eyes away from Buffy.

"Don't worry, Buff – if I DID arrest you mom, I'm sure we could find SOME way to ... work off that bail money." He grinned at her a little more and Joyce felt her cheeks burn just that much more as he walked up to her, "Two dozen cookies would cover the first offense."

Joyce smiled as he daughter gawked slightly, "Xander, trust me, I'd give you MUCH MORE than mere ... cookies."

He arched an eyebrow, "Brownies?" She grinned at him a little more and he blushed a little harder, "Ah, THAT – be sure that you take some vacation time off, Joyce, we may be ... detained."

"Okay, THAT'S IT!" Buffy came down the stairs the rest of the way and pushed Xander back, "You, no flirting with my mom about sex-like acts you'd try and perform on her. Mom, no flirting with Xander – he's flirt-less, of the non-flirting variety, protected under the No Flirtage Protection Act."

Joyce arched her eyebrow – her daughter was a tad bit protective, "Buffy, is there anything you want to TELL us? You seem a _touch_ protective of Xander ... like you are staking your claim or something."

Xander, after hearing this, just snorted, "Yeah, right – Joyce, I love your daughter like a sister, but no, I have not only my pride, but also my standards." Buffy gave him an injured look, a genuinely injured look, and he went on, "I know why she's wearing that ... monstrosity tonight, and for whom she is wearing it – trust me, Joyce, no."

Joyce frowned slightly at that, looking at Buffy, who appeared to be a second away from bursting into tears, and then looked back at Xander, "Really? And whom is this person, precisely? What do you think of him?"

Xander just snorted again, but this time there was more than a little disgust behind it, "I don't use that kind of language in front of ladies, and we're also on a timetable here." He poked his head into the stairwell and shouted, "YO, CASPER, GET YOUR FRIENDLY-GHOST-BUTT DOWN HERE! HALLOWEEN. CANDY. BRATS OF ALL AGES DUMPED ON US BY THE TROLL!"

Joyce frowned as she heard a stumble from upstairs and then saw Willow walk down, with a sheet on that had 'Boo!' written across it, "How'd you know I was going as a ghost, Xand?" Joyce knew the girl had a crush on her best friend, but was very afraid to try anything with it.

"Wills, if anything, when it comes to Halloween, you're becoming predictable. Lose the sheet and beat feet – hey, that rhymed!" Joyce watched him wrangle the two girls out of the house and off to the school and once the door shut, she sighed and leaned back against it – if Buffy didn't take Xander as a boyfriend, and SOON, Joyce would have to take him as a boy toy. Letting an ass that nice get away was a crime ... one that she didn't intend to commit, she thought with a smile.

At Sunnydale High

"Where'd you get the uniform, Xand? Look authentic."

Xander smiled at Buffy slightly, "It is – Ethan, the guy who owns the store, says it was used in a movie not too long ago by one of the main characters."

She looked at him oddly, "And you fit in it? Where's all the padding?"

He rolled his eyes as Willow came back from Snyder with bags, "My character was a BAD guy, Buffy – Uber-bad, of the worst kind of bad."

She gave him a look, "So, you want to be a bad guy?"

Xander gave her a look in return, "It was the only one in the store that fit, Buff – don't read too much into this." He left her to her pack of screaming kids and went to his own, smiling as they all looked at him oddly, "So, who wants to learn how to sleaze more candy?" All of the odd looks turned to smiles and nods, "Good, now tears are key, so if you go for the 'you missed me' act, make sure you go straight for the chocolate, right?" They all nodded and he smiled, "Good, now let's go and get some good stuff – remember what places give you the cheap stuff, we'll ... do something about them, later." The kids all cheered and he led them off on their hunt, getting into character as a police officer, but also as the character in the movie by thinking up a believable set of mission parameters:

Primary Mission Statement-

Protect Willow Rosenberg at all costs.

Eliminate all demonic threats.

Assist Elizabeth Anne 'Buffy' Summers.

Ingest as many Twinkies as humanly possible.

Secondary Mission Statement-

Personal Survival.

If Willow Rosenberg is harmed or killed, eliminate person or persons responsible with extreme prejudice (upgrade to Utmost Priority).

Secure financial independence.

No sooner had he finished that list, some of it funny, some of it deadly serious, he heard people begin to scream and look around – kids began to act just like ... the demons they turned into, and it was then that he was driven to his knees by a sheer force of agony and felt his insides turn first into molten fire and then into cold steel as blackness came to his mind ... and then he knew nothing.

Elsewhere, Else-when

Deep within the ravaged core of the computer complex, a single terminal whirred to life and it's screen blinked on, flashing 'Uploading Mission Statements to Unit X-1000 ... Upload Complete. Updating Scanning Software ... Complete.' With that done, the system shut down and went dormant once again as bombs began to rock the buried complex.

Sunnydale California – 10/31/1997

... Booting Operating System ... Checking Memory Core ... Checking Power Source and Reserves ... Checking Software ... Updating Software ... Updating Mission Statements ... System Check – Complete. It snapped open it's eyes and smoothly pushed itself off of the ground that it had been laying on – it's internal scanners flipped through it's new enhancements and soon began to scan all of the beings around it as chaos seemed to reign; numerous humanoid life forms, yet not ... human, according to scans – energy spikes in 76.54 of all scanned not consistent with humans, "Interesting." It looked down and took in it's uniform, that of a police officer, circa 1992 and from Los Angeles, according to the name on the badge, then looked over and around itself before looking at it's Mission Statements. Protect Willow Rosenberg – Terminate demonic threats, and assist Elizabeth Anne 'Buffy' Summers; 'demonic' and 'Buffy' – does not compute.

"Help me!" It looked over and saw a young female human running from a group of young men in 'pirate' regalia – she saw him and ran towards him, the men following her, "Help me, Xander!"

Brunette, moderate height and weight, brown eyes – not Willow Rosenberg, so it snapped it's hand out and skewered the leading 'pirate' through the heart, which got a shriek from the woman as he began to walk and scan around him. Odd energy spikes in the surrounding air were very low on the radioactive scale, but still enough to possible induce fits of mass amnesia, "Interesting."

"Xander!" Turning towards the name of his apparent form, he came face to face with what appeared to be Willow Rosenberg – female, approximately 17 years old, five feet four inches tall, red hair to neck, green eyes, slim figure, petite breasts, pale features ... and after a quick look, a natural redhead. "Xander?"

"Willow Rosenberg?" She had no mass, no density, no pulse, no life signs, and this puzzled his internal processors – what was she?

"Yeah, Xander, now stop kidding around and – AH!" Something passed right through her and he reacted, slamming his fist into it and then decapitating it while turning his left arm into a blade. When he turned back to her, she was shaking, "W... what are you?"

"I am unit X-1000, of Cyberdyne Industries. I have been assigned to protect you." He reached out and tried to grab her arm, but passed right through it, "Odd, you appear to be of an intangible nature. Query: if you cannot be harmed, how am I to protect you?"

The 'ghost' who was Willow Rosenberg worked her mouth once, then twice, and finally managed to speak, "Xander, what happened to you?"

Willow's relative POV

"I am unit X-1000 of Cyberdyne Industries. I have been assigned to protect you." Willow felt her brain begin to shut down as 'Xander' reached out and tried to grab her arm, but when his hand passed through hers, he spoke again, "Odd, you appear to be of an intangible nature. Query: if you cannot be harmed, how am I to protect you?"

She worked her jaw once, then twice, and finally was able to get out one solitary question, "Xander, what happened to you?"

"Nothing has happened to me, Willow Rosenberg – I am unit X-1000, I am running at peak efficiency, and I require you to duck." She reacted on instinct and dove out of the way as he shot his hand up and ... it changed – it became liquid and silvery in appearance, distended and formed into sword blade of some kind and skewered another 'demon', though if it was or was not a demon, that was up in the ... air.

It hit her like a Mack truck – he had dressed as a cop, an Uber-bad cop from a movie a few years ago ... and now he was a 'Cyberdyne Industries Unit X-1000; he was a TERMINATOR! "Oh, this is bad, this is very bad." She got to her feet even as he retracted the sword/arm back and turned it back into an arm, "Unit X-1000, what is your name? What is you ... Mission Statement?"

He looked at her oddly and then spoke, "I have no name. My Primary Mission Statement is to protect you, to destroy all demonic entities and to assist one Elizabeth Anne 'Buffy' Summers in her life. Query – what kind of name is ... 'Buffy'?"

Willow snorted at that, having asked herself that question a few times herself, though more to the tune of 'what the hell was Joyce thinking', "Well, Buffy is a nickname that she prefers over her true name, so we stick to it. Now, I need you to listen carefully, Xander – your real name is Alexander Lavelle Harris, you've been my best friend since Kindergarden and you cannot kill anything else unless I say so, alright? Something weird is going on here – I dressed up as a ghost and now I am one, you dressed up as a cop from a movie, a Terminator, and now you are one and Buffy ... oh shit, Buffy!" She took off running, not even realizing that she was running right _through_ bushes, cars, dogs, demons or rocks, but when it did finally hit her, she looked back and saw her path and smiled, "Cool!"

"Shall we leave?" 'Xander' melted through a fence instead of jumping over it, passing his liquid metal body through the cracks and gaps in the fence and keeping himself upright, "I do believe that you think that Miss Summers is in danger."

"She is – she went as Lady Useless tonight." Willow took off again and kept note that Xander was keeping up with her without any real effort.

Elsewhere

She screamed yet again as a horrible little demon nipped and slashed as her rapidly-shredding dress – she wasn't sure where she was, or just whom was responsible for her capture, but she wanted to go home, where it was safe and she was protected from having to think too much, "Will not some brave man come and protect me?"

As if in answer to her question, one of the demons around her shrieked and a woman ... no, as she as dressed she must have been a harlot, ran right through it and towards her, "Buffy!

Not knowing just whom the harlot was calling for, Elizabeth just screamed again ... a scream that was answered by screams from the demons, though more painful in nature.

"Xander, what are you doing!" She stopped screaming long enough to open her eyes ... and fall in love – he was tall, a bit on the thin side, but he held one of the things by it's throat with several others around him dead from decapitation. Had she been in her right mind, she was sure she would have swooned, but the dark blue uniform he wore, with silver and colorful adornments he had upon his chest and shoulders were enough to override her natural reaction; he looked at the ghostly harlot in a way that even she would call blank and then threw the beast some goodly four lengths away, slamming it into the side of what appeared to be a settlement's wall. "What did I tell you about not killing them?"

The man looked her up and then down, and Lady Elizabeth felt herself becoming very warm in the cheeks as he spoke, his eyes obviously probing her for her virtue, "She is Elizabeth Summers – facial recognition to memory index is a 99.87 percent match, retinal, physiological and voice-recognition patters are all matches. Query: Why is she acting so ... odd?" Elizabeth was sure that the man had found that she was a pure, chaste, good woman and would gladly accept her as his bride, but truthfully, she didn't understand anything except for his past question and was only mildly vexed by it.

"Because we all turned into our costumes, Xander – she went as an 18th century noblewoman and here she use, putting Women's Lib back a good century or two without even trying." The Harlot, as she came to call her, ran her hands through her red mane, natural by the looks of her brows, and let out a muffled screech before taking a breath and passing right through one of the decapitated bodies of the demons, "Buffy, are you okay?"

"Who is this 'Buffy' that you speak of, you low-borne harlot? I am Lady Elizabeth, and I demand that you return me to my father – he may spare you your lives, should I remain unharmed."

The Harlot's eyes narrowed slightly as the mumbled, "Oh, you are _SO_ going to pay for that when you get back to your right mind," before stomping off to the most-assuredly Lord-sent man, "Xander, come on – we're going."

"And what about ... 'Buffy'? Is she not part of our group?" Elizabeth was sure her grin split her cheeks, as her true knight had not forgotten her.

"If she wants to live, then yes, she'll be coming with us." The Harlot glared at her and, contrary to popular belief, Elizabeth got the message and followed them even as the man removed his oddly shaped pistol from his holster.

"Good sir, where is your musket? Surely you, a true knight and noble man, would have a musket."

"I am incapable of producing chemical or mechanical projectiles with my own body, hence, I am relegated to using this standard-issue weapon." His tone was flat, crisp, like that of a scholar, but his eyes swept to and fro before him, scouting out any and all possible threats to her person, and this made her cheeks even warmer and her pulse quicken as the Harlot led them away.

Buffy's House

Willow was seething by the time they reached Buffy's home – Xander had, in the almost ten minutes they had been walking, shot four different mini-demons/kids in the legs and, when she confronted him about it, calmly swatted her rant aside with logic, 'you told me not to kill them, and I have not – they will live'. Not only that, 'Lady Elizabeth', as she demanded to be called, was about one 'Harlot' away from getting her teeth knocked down the back of her throat – Willow knew that Buffy was more than occasionally annoying and rage-inspiring to Giles, but now she could truly feel his pain in how she was being treated by her while she fawned all over Xander, practically dry-humping him half of the time. When this was all over, Willow decided, she was going to lay one on Xander so hard and long that he'd never think of looking at another woman, let alone ever think of Buffy ever again.

One inside, and with Xander locking the door, she turned to Xander again, "Now, Xander, tell me who and what you are – all of the details this time."

"I am a Cyberdyne Industries Terminator-series model X-1000; made from poly-mimetic alloys, my base lifespan is nearly 200 of your human years – I am capable of attaining any shape that is not of a mechanical nature, much like scissors, internal combustion engines, locking mechanisms, etcetera, but I am capable of becoming any and everyone I come in contact with." To seemingly prove this point, he stepped forwards and ... shifted ... until it was like she was looking at an exact, yet nude, replica of herself, and then spoke again, only now in her voice, "My micro-processors allow me to computer more than four trillion computations per second." He shifted again, this time into Buffy's body, once again nude, which was really beginning to irk her, "I can turn into surfaces, clothing, weaponry, and I am capable of interfacing with computers with a mere touch." Her skin morphed into the police officer's uniform again and 'she' expanded and changed until he was Xander again. "Is that sufficient, Willow Rosenberg?"

"Demon! How dare you rake your eyes across my pure and chase self!" Lady Buffy went on and on about how dare Xander 'molest' her, but Willow could have cared less as she heard a familiar voice from outside scream for help. She pushed her head through the wall and then jerked it back, "Cordy! Xander, Cordy's outside!"

He cocked his head at her, "Cordelia Margaret Chase, age 17, brunette, dark eyes, socialite from her father's company, 36C-25-30." He walked away even as Willow growled – how in the hell did he know her measurements? Even as she turned to rant at him, much as Lady Buffy was, he unlocked the door, drew his gun and walked out of the now-open door and began firing at the large beast/dog that was chasing the cat-suited bane of her existence – for the first time in her life, Willow was seriously contemplating homicide as an option as her Xander-shaped Terminator finished killing the 'dog', grew another hand to help facilitate his reloading the pistol he had, and brought Cordy back into the house.

Cordy was a mess – cuts, blood, matted hair ... cat ears ... and Willow sighed, "Okay, you're Cordelia Chase, and you're not a cat."

"Of course I'm not a cat, you doofus! God, I am not some mental patient like you three ... and why does Xander have a third arm sprouting out of his chest?"

Willow looked over and saw that, yes indeed, her Xander had a third arm that was holding the spent magazine, "He went as a police officer and the uniform was the same one used in that movie, Terminator 2: Judgment Day, so now he's the evil Terminator."

Cordelia shrieked and backed off into a wall and began to cower, "Don't kill me! I'm young, beautiful and really rich!"

"I am not to kill anything unless otherwise told to by Willow Rosenberg – I have been sent back to protect her." Willow felt a small smile tug at her lips even as Xander reabsorbed the arm back into himself and locked the door, "Query: What are we to do now?"

Willow's brain was going a mile a minute as she tried to figure out just what was going on, but Cordelia brought up another question, "What's with Lady Useless over there? She's looking at a picture of herself – is she that vain?"

"She got turned into her costume, Cordelia Chase, as I have also, apparently; due to her position in history, she is in a state of shock in seeing herself in photographs, but it not being her." Willow looked over at Xander and absently nodded as she hoped that some of this intelligence carried over if this wackiness ever ended.

"Willow!" She looked back at the door as she hard someone yell out her name, "It's me, Angel! Open the door, and hurry!"

She didn't even think about it even as her hand passed through the knob of the door once, then twice, but then stomped her foot ad looked at Xander, "Open the door, Xander!" He complied, though with a cautious look on his face, and Angel rushed in, covered in cuts and bruises, but his vampire healing was already work on it, "Angel, what's going on?"

"All hell's broken loose out there, Willow, but it's a spell of some kind, I think. The air's thick with it-"Angel started to say, but was then belted away from her by a hand that was connected with Xander's body, a flat, murderous look on his face, and his arm morphing into a sword.

"Vampire."

X-1000

The individual speaking to Willow Rosenberg had no pulse, no body heat, unusual brain activity and was healing at an impossible rate for a human – his CPU was processing all of the factors and finally came up with one answer, which lead to him belting away the thing from Willow Rosenberg, "Vampire."

"Xander, don't hurt him!" He heard Willow Rosenberg scream, even as Lady Elizabeth screamed but was then silenced by what sounded to be a right hook to the jaw from the other occupant of the room, Cordelia Chase, "He's our friend!"

"Primary Mission Statement Three: Eliminate all demonic threats. This 'Angel' is not human – he is a demon, hence his Termination." He raised his blade in the air, ready to decapitate the thing, when Willow Rosenberg stepped in front of him – she was a ghost, intangible, thus he could not harm her, but if he did attack, it would violate his programmed Mission Statements and he would be forced to self-terminate, "Remove yourself from in front of it, Willow Rosenberg."

"No, Xander – Angel has a soul, he's our friend and he's an ally! Don't kill him, that's an order!" He froze and looked at her, lowering his weapon slightly, "I mean it, Xander, don't kill him!"

Keeping the comment that, with popular knowledge, one must die to become a vampire, he amended his Mission Statements:

Primary Mission Statement-

Protect Willow Rosenberg at all costs.

Eliminate all demonic threats. Amendment – demonic entity known as 'Angel' is an ally of Willow Rosenberg and Elizabeth Anne 'Buffy' Summres. Investigate into the claim he has a soul – do not trust, but do not eliminate.

Assist Elizabeth Anne 'Buffy' Summers.

Ingest as many Twinkies as humanly possible.

Secondary Mission Statement-

Personal Survival.

If Willow Rosenberg is harmed or killed, eliminate person or persons responsible with extreme prejudice (upgrade to Utmost Priority).

Secure Financial Independence.

He looked back at her, 'Angel' getting to his feet and his eyes wide with shock as the unit returned his hand to 'normal' form, "He will not be killed, Willow Rosenberg, unless he presents a clear and present threat to your safety or that of Elizabeth Anne 'Buffy' Summers."

She sighed, "Call her Buffy, Xander – 'Elizabeth Anne Buffy Summers' is a real mouthful, right?" She smiled at him and he accepted her attempt at humor.

"Agreed." He turned around and looked at Cordelia Chase, who was still rubbing her knuckles, "Nice shot."

She smiled a little, but her vital signs showed that she was in a state of emotional distress that humans called 'panic', "Thanks, Xan ... um, what do I call you?"

"'Xander' will suffice, in that it is what Willow Rosenberg has been calling me over the elapsed time. Query: why is it that this ... 'Angel' has not been eliminated?"

She shrugged even as Willow Rosenberg began to speak to 'Angel' in a highly agitated voice, "I didn't know he was a vampire until tonight – makes sense, though, in a freaky necrophiliac way with Lady Useless over there. She has a major thing for him, apparently, and he's her boyfriend."

'Xander' furrowed his brow, "That is ... disturbing." He turned around and looked at the vampire, who was doing his best to not shake visibly, though his scanners could see the micro-vibrations in the muscle tissue of the vampire, "Query, Willow Rosenberg: who else is living in this domicile?"

She scrunched her face up, "Um, Buffy's mom, Joyce Summers, but she's at her art gallery tonight. Cordelia, where did you get your costume?"

Even as Cordelia answered, the unit once again updated its Mission Statement, but this time it was in clear preparation of an event that had a 67.85 percent chance of happening:

Secondary Mission Statement-

Personal Survival.

If Willow Rosenberg is harmed or killed, eliminate person or persons responsible with extreme prejudice (upgrade to Utmost Priority).

Secure Financial Independence.

Protect Joyce and 'Buffy' Summers – if relationship with demonic entity known as 'Angel' leads to putting Joyce Summers in danger, eliminate 'Buffy' Summers and 'Angel'.

Sunnydale Library

Rupert Giles was sitting back with an old book, looking through it with an idle fascination and wonder just what the hell he had been thinking when he had turned down the invitation to Jenny Calendar's costume party – that was one bird that could most definitely ruffle his feathers any time she wanted to.

"Giles!" He jerked in his seat and fumbled the book as Willow ran into the room, quite literally _through_ the door, and in a leather outfit that made his inner Ripper sit up and beg for more.

"Willow? What is going on? How did you phase right through that door? What ... are you wearing?"

She blushed lightly and began to babble about costumes, people turning into demons and such, but eventually he got enough of it to finally make sense of it – people had been turning into the costumes they had been wearing, but not all of them; Buffy and Xander both had, as had she, but Cordelia had not. Once all of this processed, he asked her, "Where did you get your costumes? Did Cordelia get hers at the same store?"

"No, she didn't, Giles – she went to Party Town."

He frowned, "What did you go as? A hooker?"

She growled, "No, I went as a ghost and this is what I was wearing under that! Oh, when Buffy stops acting like a ditz I'm going to slap her for calling me a harlot all those times."

Giles shook his head, "Willow, focus! What did Xander go as?" Over the next minute of explanation, Giles felt all of the blood run out of his face – he had seen the first movie when it had first come out, on a dare rather than having any real want to see it, but had seen the second one of his own violation and if Xander had become that ... thing, then he could sum the entire situation up in one short sentence, "Oh bloody hell."

"Eric's? Erin's Place? No, that's not it. Oh, Ethan's!" He snapped his head over as she hopped up and down and clapped her hands, "The costume store was name Ethan's!"

"Ethan? Ethan sodding Rayne – I should have guessed, this whole stunt stinks of his meddling. I will contact the Watcher's Council to see if they know anything on how to counteract this ... childishness."

Outside Of The Library

'Xander' listened and tapped into the phone lines as Rupert Giles made his call to England, asking about ways to get rid of 'Chaos Magic', a concept which puzzled him, but then when things in the conversation went from how to contain the problem to eliminating all potentially infected people, several subroutines within his programming instantly came online and began functioning their due process – one subroutine was to ferret out the location of the potentially hostile threat, another was to probe it's electronic databases and establish a link to it, preferably undetectable, a feat that was highly feasible given the low-grade technology that was present compared to his own capabilities. These probes found numerous things that his processors found ... disturbing, and filed these remarks away for further study as he stood and began to walk away – he had a target to find, one Ethan Rayne, and once found, that threat would be terminated.

Working his way through town, processors still working on the links to the Watcher's Council, he absently disabled many of the demons whom were foolish enough to come his way, but all of that came to a stop when he saw a group of humans dressed in pirate regalia stalking a young woman dressed in what his saw to be a Catholic School girl costume, all of them highly aroused and the young woman terrified – he started to walk away when something made him pause, a ... feeling of what could be called outrage, no, of rage, and he turned on his heel, morphing his hand into a blade, and began to approach towards the group of men, "Cease and desist, humans – you are breaking the law."

One of the 'pirates' turned towards him and grinned, "Arr, mateys, we have ourselves a law man here to try and tell us seadogs what to do! I say we run him through and rape the woman all night long. What say ye?" The pirates all agreed and began forwards.

"Halt or you will be harmed." Remembering Willow Rosenberg's words, he put his hand back to normal and pulled the 9mm at his side, "This is your last warning." The men charged and he executed his programming, firing one round into the knee of each of the five charging pirates, generally before they got more than five feet from their original positions, and then holstered his weapon.

"Xander?" He stopped and turned to the young woman, who was quivering, "Is that you?"

Deciding to go for the simplest explanation, he shook his head and, after a quick scan, turned into her, costume and all, "No, I am not – I am the X-1000 model from Cyberdyne Industries." He reverted back to his 'normal' look and she passed out, which allowed him to walk off and continue his search for Ethan Rayne, a fairly simple affair when he found a phone booth and accessed the local database, finding 'Ethan's Costume Shop' rather easily.

Ethan's Costume Shop

"Ripper? Is that you old mate?" Nothing was said in return as the door shut, but he did morph his hand into a short-bladed knife as he walked forwards, "Mate? Is that you?"

"I am not your ... mate, Ethan Lewis Rayne, born to Jonathan and Michelle Rayne in Sussex, Engand, June 21, 1958. I am your death."

The already pale man turned an even paler color when he saw the hand at his side, and began to back up, "W ... what are you doing?"

"How do I stop the spell, Ethan? How do I stop this ... madness?"

The Englishman stopped quivering and then grinned, "Now, that would be the question of the evening, wouldn't it? What will you give me if I tell you now?"

"A quick death." This shocked the man, "One of my Mission Statements is to terminate, with extreme prejudice, the individual or individuals whom harms or kills Willow Rosenberg, and to elevate it to my utmost priority – she is a ghost and to become a ghost, one must first be killed." He turned the short blade into a long, tapering needle, and held it chest-level to Ethan, "How do I stop the spell, Ethan?"

The man grinned and sing-songed, "I'll never te-ell!"

With that, Cybredyne Industries Terminator model X-1000 lanced the needle forwards and punctured the chest of Ethan Rayne, knowing that sooner or later, the man would give him the answers he sought.

Later – Streets of Sunnydale

Giles cursed his car to go faster even as Lady Buffy, or Lady Useless, depending on whom you decided to speak to, lay passed out in his back seat with Cordelia and Angel in the front seat – in a fit of supreme and divine humor, Willow was jogging through objects and opening a lead on them as he pushed the accelerator closer to the floor, but only a tad bit. The pair of them had found out Ethan's base of operations, but on the way there they had come across Angel, Cordelia and Lady Buffy and had been forced to stop in order to save Buffy's life, again; all along he had been asking just where Xander was, but when Angel had said that Xander vanished not long after Willow had left, Willow remembered Xander's 'mission statements' and that one of them was 'protect Willow' – he had presumably followed her to the Library but from there it was anyone's guess.

"There it is!" Giles pulled into the front of the store that Cordelia pointed out and saw immediately that Willow was stumbling out of the store, looking very sick for a ghost, and that only spurred him to move faster – inside, though, he saw a sight that would haunt him for years to come.

Ethan Rayne was on the ground, bleeding out, gutted, one arm severed at the wrist, the other at the elbow, one leg gone at the knee and had one of his eyes gouged out, his right one, and before him stood Alexander Harris, his first finger on his right hand having speared and plucked out the eye of Ethan, who was moaning in agony even as he whimpered, "Break the statue – stop the spell and break the statue." Xander slammed his left arm out, morphing it into a blade of some kind and shattered the bust, which caused a surge of power, which not only flattened everyone in the room, but also tossed Xander through a shelving unit.

It was several minutes before Giles was able to get to his feet, but when he did he saw the Ethan was dead, a large puddle of blood having formed around him, and after looking around saw that Angel was attending to Buffy, Willow was on the ground, unconscious but breathing, Cordelia was griping about her security deposit for her costume and Xander ... Xander was still out and under several pieces of shelving.

"Giles? Are you okay?" Buffy sat up and slowly got to her feet, seeming having regained what passed for her intelligence, and walked into the store before he could stop her – she turned a rather putrid color of green at the sight of Ethan and immediately emptied her stomach on the lower skirt of her horridly over-done dress, several times, in fact, and it was several minutes before she could control herself enough to ask, "What happened?"

"Xander wanted answers, apparently," Angel said, his pale face slightly green as he moved the pieces off of Xander and checked him over. "He's alive."

"Then let us be out of this ghastly place – I want to ask him what the bloody hell is going on when he wakes up." Rupert Giles of England looked over at his old friend and sighed as they all piled back into his Citroen, which coughed to life and then, slowly, made it's way down the street and back to the school Library.

Next Day – Sunnydale Library

Willow worried about her friend as he massaged his temples, again, and tried to answer Giles' questions about just what he had done the previous night – she knew he was a capable liar, after all, he had taught her the arts, but while he had a single tell, his left eye twitching slightly when he did lie, there was no tell this time; he was telling them the truth in that he didn't remember anything from the previous, hellish night.

The interrogation had started off nearly an hour before, but almost an hour before that Willow had started laying into Buffy for calling her a 'harlot' numerous times on the previous night, swatting her in the arm whenever she got near, and while the Slayer had apologized profusely for the next forty-five minutes, it didn't make it hurt any less until Xander looked over at her and told her to quit because Buffy's whining about being hit was only making his headache even worse. Of course Buffy took offense to this, but he told her to zip it, backing that up with a glare that nobody would have questioned, before saying that if she didn't he'd go and get Cordelia to nag right back at her, which shut her up and made Willow grin, remembering the right cross that had shut up the Slayer the previous night.

"Xander, are you positive that you do not remember-"Giles started out, but Xander cut him off by slamming his hand down on the table and glaring at the librarian.

"Damn it, Giles, if I could remember don't you think I'd fucking TELL YOU?" Willow back off as Angry Xander came out to play, and he wasn't a nice Xander even as Giles at back in his chair and Buffy perked up, "Look, I'm sorry your friend got killed and I got turned into his murderer, but to tell you the truth, I don't care – he got what he deserved for causing all the chaos that apparently happened last night, so just drop it. If I remember something I'll tell you, but I have to get to the computer lab now – I have a project I need to work on." With that, Xander got up and walked out of the library.

Willow walked over to Giles, who sighed, "Don't push him, Giles – if I were in his place, I wouldn't want to remember either."

"It's not that, Willow – if he is or has any part of that thing left in him, I shudder to think what would happen if it was allowed to run loose, uncontrolled! It could bloody well start off World War Three."

"Or he could use it to keep us all alive. Look, Giles, I'll talk to him, but don't expect anything out him – Xander likes his secrets and unless you need to know, he'll never tell you." Oddly enough, Willow felt like her own words were being written in stone as she spoke – this was not a good omen.

Computer Lab

Seated in the back row, away from the sight of all of the others in the room, Alexander Harris 'typed' away on his keyboard on a project, but was doing much more than that – Cyberdyne Industries Terminator model Alexander Harris was probing the Internet and electronic databases for ways into the Watcher's Council's bank accounts, especially after what he had found the previous night. They were a bunch of crooks under the guise of an organization that 'protected' the world, and they needed to be dealt with – before that, though, he needed funding, which was the purpose of his current project.

A smile crossed his face as he found one account, the account of one Quinton Travers, and he drained it to one of his new off-shore accounts, a sum to the tune of nearly 33 millions pounds Sterling – it would do, for now, but this project was one that would take years to complete, so he erased any traces of him being there and then brought up a computer file that he had tucked away in the school computers, via the phone modem line, and saw his listed Mission Parameters, before updating them one last time:

Primary Mission Statement-

Protect Willow Rosenberg at all costs.

Eliminate all demonic threats. Amendment – demonic entity known as 'Angel' is an ally of Willow Rosenberg and Elizabeth Anne 'Buffy' Summres (the Slayer). Investigate into the claim he has a soul – do not trust, but do not eliminate.

Assist Elizabeth Anne 'Buffy' Summers (the Slayer).

Do Not Trust The Watcher's Council – gather evidence against them and eliminate them.

Terminate employment of Snyder, John, as principal of Sunnydale High School – he is an unnecessary threat to self and others.

Run security checks on Snyder, John; Wilkins III, Richard – Mayor of Sunnydale; and Calendar, Jennifer – computer teacher at Sunnydale High School (suspicious energy spikes surround her).

Personal Survival.

Secondary Mission Statement-

Personal Survival. (Upgrade to Primary Mission Statement)

If Willow Rosenberg is harmed or killed, eliminate person or persons responsible with extreme prejudice (Upgrade to Utmost Priority as necessary).

Secure Financial Independence.

Protect Joyce and 'Buffy' Summers – if relationship with demonic entity known as 'Angel' leads to putting Joyce Summers in danger, eliminate 'Buffy' Summers and 'Angel'.

Research subject of 'Magic' and its possible applications to current and future missions.

Keep demonic entity 'Angel' under surveillance – probably of his pursuing an intimate relationship with Slayer Summers: 93.79 percent.

Distance self from Cordelia Chase – verbal spars only.

With a smile, he shut off the computer and left the room, idly scanning all of his fellow students as he walked down the hall – one never knew when they would need to assume a new face in order to get away.

AN: Okay, this one is finished – Please, do me a favor and don't make any comments about the directive that has 'eliminate Buffy Summers' part, as that will be explained in the next part of this now-series. I've worked out most of what will happen, but if you catch any loopholes or obvious breaks in logic, remember that he's just been merged/possessed by what ammounts to the ultimate killing machine. What do you guys and girls think? Feedback, please. AR.


	2. Story 2, Chapter 1

X1000 – Take Two

Author: Anime Ronin

Rating: R, just to be safe

Summary: A series of short stories in chapter form – the trials and tribulations of a Man made Machine.

Disclaimer: I own nothing.

AN: Okay, my first attempt at a sequel to my original story sucked, blew, swallowed and repeated several times, with only a few very minor redeeming factors. That having been said, I'm taking another stab at this, though in a far more manageable form – this will hit some of the high and low notes of the rest of Season 2 and, depending on how things go, Season 3.

AN2: No promises on things like Xander's characterization and reactions to things as far as human norms go – he's still, technically, a machine at this point. I can only say that I will try.

1 ?

(Sunnydale Library – November 1, 1997)

She watched in abject horror as her best male friend's hand slid from the double-bladed battle axe that it had been just second before into a silvery mass of morphing liquid, and then into what appeared to be a scimitar before it morphed back into his right hand. It was impossible, it was incredible … but after what she had seen last night and in her little more than two years as a Slayer, Buffy had to admit that it was one of the coolest things she had ever seen – terrifying, yes, but also VERY cool.

It then hit her, though, that her best guy friend had just told her that he wasn't even human anymore, that he was, in fact, the T-1000 from that movie, only he had a human mind in the computer … somewhere deep inside, he was human, but still he wasn't human in body. This thought made her sick to her stomach even as Willow clutched Xander's chest, sobbing at what he had told them even as Giles was very busily cleaning his glasses into a new prescription.

He looked first down at Willow Rosenberg, then over at Elizabeth Anne 'Buffy' Summers, and finally over at Rupert Keith Giles – all of them were experiencing what could be called 'mental trauma' in that they had all be told of his true condition, an act that had gone against his processor's best suggestion as to how to proceed, which had been to put up a farce until they found out the truth. In truth, he knew that it was the best thing to do as a human, but over the past few hours he had come to the glaring reality that, save for in mind alone, he was no longer human – he was a human mind trapped in a mimetic poly-alloy, more commonly known as 'liquid metal', and that body was in control of him, for the most part; sure, he could tell it where to go, how to act, even how to react, but when it came right down to it, he had very little control over what he remembered the real Terminator could do. He couldn't scan anything, couldn't extend his arms out in blades like it had in the movie (not that he planned on shutting a guy up by shoving a blade through his face while he was drinking right from the milk carton), hell, he could barely make himself FEEL anything emotionally – he had just the basics down … but that was going to change because he'd find a way to be himself again, come hell or high water … the HELLMOUTH or high water.

"Giles?" Willow pulled away from Xander long enough to look at the Watcher / Librarian, who quickly put his glasses back on his face, "Can we help him?"

He was silent for several seconds, his mind whirling for an answer that would put the girl's mind at ease, but after several seconds he just sighed and shook his head, "Willow … I wouldn't know where to begin." She gave him a look of pure disbelief and heartbreak even as he went on, "Ethan had the power of Janus, the Roman god of chaos, behind him when he preformed this spell, and while I admit that it would be difficult to even beseech Janus to alter what he has done, it would be impossible to ensure that Xander would be made human again."

"But … isn't there something you can do?" Willow's weak, almost defeated voice made him want to go track down what was left of Ethan and curse them and his soul to hell for what happened.

He merely settled for shaking his head, banishing Ripper back to his dark little corner, "No, Willow, there is not. With time, though, perhaps, but for now … no."

"This … is an unfortunate turn of events." They all turned to look at Xander, who was wearing a frown as he slowly extended his right index finger out in a two-foot-long lance that tapered to a needle-like point, "Excuse me … I need to process … to think." He morphed his hand back to where it was supposed to be and left out of the room before anyone could stop him.

When they all surged out of the Library to catch up with him, though, all they were greeted with was the slowly-filling school and neither hide nor hair of Alexander Harris.

(Elsewhere)

"This could benefit us, brother."

"It would also destroy us, sister. He is aligned neither with us nor with the darkness," he pointed out somewhat primly.

She stated, just as primly, "He is still adjusting, brother, and is vulnerable enough that we could mould him into our Champion." He gave her an affronted look, knowing what was coming next, "He would be infinitely more agreeable with us all as opposed to your vampire, and is more adaptable."

"You would prefer Angelus to be released back unto the world, then, sister?"

"He would not last long, brother – if Angelus is to ever be released again, his termination will handled by someone who is not affiliated with you or with your favored lower beings."

He replied, somewhat stiffly, "The Watcher's Council has served us for generations, sister, though often without their knowledge."

"They serve only their own misguided thoughts of imagined power, son." Both shut up instantly as the speaker went on again, "And more to the point, they have mostly lost their way, or at least their upper hierarchy has."

Both bowed to their father, who's black wings ruffled slightly as he stepped forwards – yes, things were going according to his plans.

(Sunnydale)

"Penny for your thoughts?" He looked over and saw the one person his mind told him would be there – Willow was at the top of the list to have followed him, let alone found him, at 95.3 percent, and Principal Snyder would have been at the lowest at only 2 percent, but Aura Davis, one of Cordelia's 'Sheep' had not even made the list.

He arched an eyebrow at her and looked around, not seeing any of her running buddies around, "What brings you up here, Aura? Last time I checked, Cordelia's head of new fashion trends could not be seen with the school loser."

She gave Xander a fond smile as she walked over to where he was standing, on top of the school roof and leaning against the railing there, "What, can't I come over and talk to the one person who made my first year at Sunnydale Junior High bearable?" Her mother had brought her and her older brother from Japan and she had started sixth grade in a school that was completely inhospitable towards her – Xander had, on a whim, asked her to sit with them (Willow and their other best friend, Jessie) and for a few weeks he was the best friend she had until Cordelia came to her and brought her into the fold.

Xander looked back at her with a calculating eye, "Only when Cordelia and the rest of her sheep aren't around, which is rare."

She smiled, brushing her highlighted hair back over her ears, "She's playing hookey with the others today, something about a new shoe store opening up in LA." She heard him chuckle dryly and she looked him over – there was something very different about Xander that morning, something she could not put her finger on, so she went out on a limb, "So, crazy night, last night, huh?"

He studied Aura's fine Asian features, which his mind told him was both aesthetically pleasing and had very little in the way of cosmetics on, and then nodded as he noted that she was, for the first time in years, dressed down in a pair of blue jeans, a simple white cotton blouse and sneakers, "Indeed it was."

"I don't remember a few hours last night, Xander." He looked over at her and saw that her eyes were indeed worried, "I can't remember them … and I feel funny this morning." She brushed her fingers across the tops of her hands, "I think something happened last night, and I would really like some answers." He looked down at the tops of her hands and his vision went black and grey for a moment – he could see the bones in her hands and arms, along with several other things, and a trio of slowly-growing opaque bones growing in her forearms, muscles and such shifting out of the way as they did, "I went as Wolverine last night, Xander … well, a female one, and I … I can't remember anything in those hours."

She watched him look up from where he was looking at her hands and stifled a gasp as she saw his eyes shift from black to brown and then heard him sigh, "Aura … I can tell you what happened last night, but it's a question of if you will believe me." She nodded at him and they began to walk away, "My question to you is how you got stuck dressing up as Wolverine, especially from Ethan's shop?"

Aura blushed, "Well, that's all he had left, apparently, and the people over at Party Town lost my reservations for the 'Jasmine' outfit." She looked over at him and saw the grin on his face, "What?"

"Never figured you for a Disney movie fan, let alone that one," Xander said to her with a semi-wry grin, one that went away, soon, "but if you had been her last night, you'd probably be a lot better off with what I'm about to tell you."

She frowned at his words, "Could it be that bad?"

He stopped and she did as well as he turned to her before he looked around, after which he looked her right in the eyes and held his hand up, "Trust me, Aura, it's worse than you know."

She watched in mute horror as his hand shimmered a silvery metal color and elongated slightly, tapering down into a sword's blade, then into a mace, and finally into an axe's blade before it went back to his hand – she'd seen the movie, too, in fact it had been one of her favorites back in junior high, but to see it in real life … "What the hell?"

He smirked at her and put his arm around her shoulder, "Trust me, Aura, 'hell' has more to do with it than you'd think. You see, last night, those few hours that you don't remember …"

(Later – Library)

Aura looked on in mute horror as Buffy bent the steel rod in half even as Mister Giles held a ball of pure fire in his hands, a ball he had called up from nothing, though it appeared to happen with more than a little trepidation on his part – when Xander had told her that 'hell had more to do with it' than she would think, apparently what she was seeing and what she had been told about the Hellmouth was what he had been talking about.

Of course, the capper of it all had been when she had felt a white-hot knife of pain rip through both of her arms, shrieked and, when it had passed, look down to see three bone spires sticking out of her flesh … the claws of Logan, the Wolverine, sticking out of HER flesh! "Wow," she uttered, unable to say much else even as the chair in front of her melted to the ground and reformed into Xander. "Can you not do that? I'm still coping here, you know?"

He gave her a look that clearly said 'how do you think I'M dealing with this, Aura,' as he spoke, "We all are, to varying degrees, Aura." He looked over at Willow, whom had passed out at the sight of Aura's blood-soaked claws, shaking his head, "Some of us better than others."

She nodded at this and sighed, sinking her face into her hands, "So, what are our options, Mister Giles?"

"You and Alexander must learn to deal with the changes that are going to happen to you, Aura," Giles said to the young woman who was doing a remarkable job of masking her own terror. "I understand that this is a great deal to take in all at once, but let me assure you that so far, we've managed to be able to handle all that has come our way."

"He's right, Aura," Xander said in a semi-helpful voice. "Last time someone was possessed … there were very minor side-effects."

She gave him a worried look, "'Last time'? Who and what was it?"

Buffy walked over, "Xander, and a Hyena spirit. He went … native for a few days, but we got it cleared put, but this is the first time I've ever heard of any 'side effects'." She gave Xander a piercing glare, but it obviously didn't hold the same clout as it once did as he just shrugged it off, "Why didn't you tell me?"

"You were not told because you didn't need to know about the alterations to my body, Buffy." She glared at him again and he relented, slightly, "muscle structure alterations, slightly improved healing ability, slightly improved sensory capabilities, and the odd urge to stalk down certain items." THAT one she knew all too well – not long after the whole Hyena incident, one that she had long-since suspected that he remembered, she had caught him stalking a lone Twinkie on the library table, never making a sound; all in all, it had been very disturbing, but as it rarely happened, she was more than willing to overlook it happening.

Aura gulped and looked at Xander somewhat shakily, "And now you're … this?"

He nodded, "Cyberdyne Industries Terminator, series T-1000, designation Alexander Harris." He winced then, and she could see in his eyes more than a little disgust, "The only real problem now is for me to try and figure out where the machine and programming ends and I begin … and I'm not sure where to start."

Buffy smiled, "Well, you can start with me on patrol tonight – I want to see just what you can do."

Xander looked first at Buffy, then at Giles and finally over at Aura as he heard Willow wake up, "Well, if anything, Aura gave me a good idea earlier." Aura gave him a blank look and he held up his left hand, clenched it into a fist and frowned in concentration – from the backs of his hands, three liquid metal claws oozed out and solidified, mimicking the claws of the Wolverine exactly, which brought a snicker from Aura, a frown from both Giles and Buffy and a fainting sound from Willow as she fell back into the bench she was on.

Aura stopped snickering and grimaced as she held up her own hands and extended her claws with more than a little pain – it would be something she would have to get used to, even if she wasn't going to be with the self-proclaimed 'Scoobies' all of the time, "And me?"

Giles spoke up this time, "Once I've briefed you on what it is that we normally do, Aura, we'll begin our training … something I must first apologize to Xander for. A glaring omission on my part, to be sure," he went on as Aura gave him a curious look, Xander rolled his eyes and Buffy looked a little shame-faced, "but once we get your training under way, we'll see about helping Xander with his own training."

Xander sucked his claws back into his body without changing expression, an action that Aura copied, though with a grimace and then a look of wonder as her hands healed in under a second, at which point Xander spoke, "Just make sure it never happens again."

At this point the doors to the Library opened and Jenny Calendar, the computer science teacher, walked into the room dressed in a skirt and blouse, her face like a thunderstorm as she charged at Giles, "Rupert, I want to make sure it is VERY clear that I am not in any mood to deal with silly answers – what happened last night?" Before Giles say anything, though, she went on, raising her hands in front of her, "Because, before last night, I was never able to do this." With that, she went totally invisible.

Silence reigned in for several minutes even as Ms. Calendar reappeared, though this time between Xander and Aura, a silence that was broken by Giles muttering out, "Bloody hell, Ethan – what were you sodding THINKING?" They were all taken aback by, though it was in British, the language used as he looked up at Ms. Calendar, "Ms. Calendar … I think you need to sit down for this."

AN: Okay, people, that's the first part of this second attempt – what do you think? Different from the first one, I know, but I'm having a little fun and so is my muse – Reviews, please, in order to let me know if I just need to abandon this attempt and just leave the first one as is.


	3. Story 2, Chapter 2

2 ?

AN: Alright, to answer a few questions, Aura was added in on a last-minute kind of thing, Jenny went as Sue Richards, a.k.a. the Invisible Woman (though Major Makoto WOULD be kinda fun … if not a touch overkill as far as cybernetics and tech goes, but then again there is no such thing as overkill), and now on with the fic.

(Sunnydale High Library – Two weeks later)

To say that it had been a straining two weeks would have been putting it very mildly in Xander's own not-so-humble opinion – Giles' past had come out in spades when an old demon he used to summon came for his body, had ended up taking Willow's body over and eventually Angel had been used to destroy the demon, leaving all of them terribly vexed and royally pissed; he honestly had never thought that listening to a dark-haired woman swearing in the Romany language, let alone his equally dark-haired classmate swearing in Japanese, would be so invigorating, let alone slightly exciting, but listening to Willow curse Giles out in the Hebrew language was a sight to behold.

Aside from that, though, it had been a pretty normal few weeks as far as things went – Xander and Aura had both been testing their own abilities under supervised conditions (generally with Giles or a revealed-Romany Jenny Calendar) and while neither were masters of their new selves, both were getting closer.

Aura's new powers did not, sadly, encompass all that the comic book character Wolverine had to offer – sure, she had the bone claws, the healing and even better reflexes, but what she did not have were the enhanced senses or the massive amounts of training in the martial and killing arts that Wolverine had; she had come to grip with all of it quite easily, though she had been reluctant to admit that the amount of time she was going to need to spend to perfect the control over these gifts would basically call for her to leave Cordy's group, which had been an event worthy of selling tickets to. Cordelia had not been exactly receiving of the entire ordeal, but by far her own reactions were tame – most of the girls were somewhat catty about her leaving (especially the group she was leaving them for), but Harmony had gone so far as to take shots at the Scoobies, but when Aura had fired back several scathing comments about them (the Scoobies) being better friends than they (the sheep) were, Harmony had acted all offended and stormed off.

Xander, for his part, knew that while the abilities granted to him by his non-human body were more numerous than Aura's, he also had more problems to deal with – over the past weeks he had figured out ways to actually FEEL emotions, experience them again, but even doing that had taken it's toll on his body. The lack of emotion helped him control his body more easily, but when he had felt that blinding rage to FEEL something, he had lost that control and, in the middle of English class, according to Aura, a wave of liquid metal had made it's way across his body and clothes and his eyes had been a metallic silver for several seconds before he felt anything else. Since then he had tried to learn to balance the feelings he wanted to feel with the things he 'needed' to feel – just one day before he had lost his temper and the strength his body possessed and had, quite inadvertently, ripped the door off of the Library off of it's hinges, something that several other students had explained away as 'rotten wood' even though the door, door jamb and door frame had been replaced just a week before.

Jenny, for her part, wasn't having that much of a bad time in that she had nominal control of her powers, didn't have too much in the way of bodily changes (though she had been caught muttering something about stretch marks around her stomach, as if she had given birth), and all in all she was taking it better than the others were. She had tested her invisibility against Xander's and Buffy's enhanced senses, finding that while she could slip past Buffy if she really tried, Xander could still hear her, though he could not see her – this disappointed her, slightly, but that all vanished when Xander had taken her off to the side to talk to her about 'business'; nobody knew what he had told her, but the smile that broke out on her face and the impulsive kiss she gave Xander on the cheek told everyone present that, whatever it was, it made Jenny very happy.

At this time, though, they all came to realize just what could possibly happen in the worst possible way – yes, there had been several deaths on Halloween night, but not all of them had been caused by the Terminator; one had been via a vampire and her name had been Tiffany, but she had also been changed into a telepath of some power. She had, earlier that night, run away from their superior numbers as her two controlled flunkies (two other newly risen vamps) shook off the control she had over them in time to have Aura dust one on her bone claws and for Buffy to dust one the old fashioned way. Unfortunately, Tiffany had gone somewhere and had conscripted massive reinforcements before the team had gotten the chance to regroup and talk about it, which was the situation they now found themselves in.

Xander's scans of the teenaged girl once called Tiffany Farmer showed she stood only five feet tall, maybe one hundred pounds if her almost non-existent clothing were drenched in water, she had frizzy brown hair, jade green eyes and a sinister twist to her lips as the dozen vampires and two demons Xander had never seen before surrounded them. In a word, they were screwed as she began to speak, "Hello, Xander."

"Vampire," the object of her attention spat back at her, only his voice held no emotion she could actually hear. This was interesting – she had noticed him over the past few weeks, noticed that he was a lot smarter and, after seeing him rip the door off of the Library's hinges, a lot stronger than before Halloween; she had been changed that night, in ways she was still trying to figure out, but one look at Xander and she could tell that he had to be on her side, one way or another.

She motioned her new minions into attacking the others, whom she vaguely recognized as Miss Calendar, the librarian, Buffy Summers, Aura Davis, one of Cordelia Chase's old 'friends' (though even Tiffany had to admit probably the only one of the group who hadn't been gang banged by the entire football team, as her nickname was the 'Ice Maiden' and no guy had ever gotten that close to her) and Willow, Xander's oldest friend, but kept her eyes on Xander as they began to circle, "So, how are you?"

"Been better – I'd ask how you are, vampire, but that would imply I would actually care." She almost gasped as one of her vampire minions charged Xander but didn't have time as he spun around and, with a knife-edge chop, took the vampire's head off as he spun back around to meet her eyes and he spoke, "So, are you going to give up now, or do we have to get dusty?"

Tiffany snarled at him and charged blindly, missing his smirk as he danced out of the way to reveal that, as he had spun, Aura had come up behind him and was waiting with her claws out – Tiffany spun off to one side as her minions began to dwindle in numbers due to Buffy's axe, the librarian's crossbow and Willow's crosses (and where was Miss Calendar?), but not enough as Aura's freaking BONE CLAWS scored a hit on her arm, drawing unmoving blood.

Aura glared at the former human, her claw now smeared with dead blood, "Hello, Tiffany – remember me? The girl you used to torment in junior high?"

Tiffany smiled at Aura and turned her powers onto the girl, "Yes, I remember – you used to do what I said back then and you shall do so again." She smiled as Aura's body stiffened slightly and her battle-ready claws slid back into her hands, "Now, go kill Buffy Summers while I recruit Xander."

Xander watched in mute fascination as Aura nodded and did as she was told to do, her claws sliding out as she snarled and charged at Buffy, who was dealing with the last of the demons at this point – he then remembered that Tiffany had telepathic powers, so he took a very big risk and walked right towards her, "You won't win, Vampire."

Tiffany vamped out and smiled as Xander approached her – just a few more feet and he'd be within her best range, "Awww, why's that, Xander? Anything demon or human that gets this close me I can control." She then turned her full power onto Xander … only to feel it slip away from him as he continued to walk forward, a smile gracing his face, so she tried again, harder, but was met with the same result, "W… what?"

Xander gave her a cold smile, "You said anything human or demon, Tiffany." He then stopped and held up both of his hands, which turned into very wicked-looking battle axes, "I'm option C – none of the above."

Tiffany ducked the first two swings, knowing that things had just gone from slightly in her favor to very against her, and began to run away even as the Slayer began to run after her – Xander, however, had other ideas as he, on an odd instinct, lashed out one axe hand and was almost surprised when that battle axe morphed into a thick rope of amorphous goo and wrapped around the fleeing vampiress' neck with a CRACK as it solidified and took on a textured look.

Buffy stopped short as she saw the thing wrapping around Tiffany's neck even as Aura also slowed while shaking her head as if to clear it, and then looked at the thing that Xander had morphed his arm into, "Xander? I thought you couldn't make mechanical stuff?"

Xander started to pull Tiffany back towards him, "What about it?"

"That's a braided whip you have around her neck." Buffy had to admit, though, that it was a pretty good idea, and she had always been known to watch any Indiana Jones movie that was on the television.

"Complex mechanicals, Buffy, and a whip dose not count as that." He pulled the corpse Tiffany Farmer closer and remolded the whip around her neck into a ring, "Any last words, vampire?"

Tiffany gasped as she looked up into the dead pools that were Xander's eyes, "M…mercy, please."

"Mercy? What's that?" Before Buffy could stop him, Xander altered the ring in a way that spikes grew out of the inside in all directions and severed her head – it was sickening the way the head was left on top of the ring while the body fell away and dusted, a shocked look on Tiffany's face before it too turned to dust.

(Later – Sunnydale Library)

The ride back to the Library had been one filled with silence – Buffy, Willow and Giles refused to speak with Xander about anything, none of them being in a very good mood with the way he had summarily executed the vampire, though it was a necessary thing, and Jenny had gone off to see if she could talk some sense into the group, leaving Xander and herself alone for a while. She had since asked just what he was able to see with his eyes and he was testing out several different modes around her, which allowed her to ask, "So, how was it to kill her like that?"

Xander's vision slipped from the table he had been looking at, having found a new scanning mode that appeared to slowly discern the material makeup of anything he happened to be looking at, and looked at Aura – even as the scanner began to discern what she was wearing and what it was made of, he gave her a curious look, "What do you mean?"

She noticed that his eyes were now blood red, which was new – his eyes changed color given whatever vision he was using and this one she wasn't sure of, "You and Tiffany went to school together for a long time now – did you feel anything when you took her head off like that?"

Different materials like cotton, rubber, brass, nylon and lace began to show up as his scans went on, "No, I didn't."

She arched her eyebrow at him, "Why not?"

"I am incapable of feeling bad for a vampire, Aura." Blue dye number 27, polyethylene, and … green dye number 4? Error – does not computer; "Never felt sorry for staking a vampire before, don't feel bad about staking one now, Aura." He paused them, the error message going away as he masked looked down to where the scan was coming from with just looking down into his hands, knowing what he was about to say would be hard for her to accept, "I can't feel pity for anything, at all." Ahh, cotton underwear with green shamrocks on them.

Aura nodded at this, her mind trying to cope with what she had just been told – something, however, niggled at her mind, "What's with your eyes?"

"Spectrometer scanning – tells me what you are and what you're made of … or in this case, what you're wearing and what it's made of." She gave him an odd look and he relented, "I can tell whatever you're wearing, regardless of what's over it." Aura blushed lightly as he felt a true grin tug at his lips, "I mean, green shamrocks?"

Aura growled at Xander as she saw the grin touch his lips, "Tell anyone and I dunk your sorry ass in liquid nitrogen." He bowed to her slightly and the issue was dropped, allowing them to sit there in the library, just sit there and saying nothing for nearly ten minutes.

SCHLUCK-SCHLACK. Xander didn't even pay any mind to the sound the first time it happened, his mind off on other things, but when he heard it again, he looked down in time to see the cause of it – Aura was extending her claws and quickly retracting them, each time she did it, though, it was followed by a grimace of pain on her part, which made him ask, "Why do you do that?"

SCHLUCK-SCHLACK, "Do what?"

SCHLUCK-SCHLACK, "That! Isn't it … painful?"

Aura nodded, "Yeah, it is." He gave her an odd look and she went on, "I was kinda hoping that this was all some kind of bad dream, and that the pain would knock me out of it somehow."

He gave her a wan grin, "I'd say the same thing, too … but only if I could feel pain."

She felt her eyes grow to the size of dinner plates as her mind processed his words, "You … can't feel pain?"

Xander shook his head at her, "No, well, not yet, anyway. I can feel a few things, but so far pain and pity are the only ones I can't feel."

Aura was silent for a moment before she spoke again, her voice thick with both sadness and regret, "I envy you, Xander, not being able to feel pain like that. I'd give just about anything to be able to do that, hell, to just be able to give someone else my nightmares about what I'm becoming."

She looked over and saw Xander looking at her, "I envy you, Aura, because you can feel those things, hell, that you can even sleep." She saw something akin to a haunted look in his eyes as he looked back over at her, "Aura … I haven't slept since that night – humans need to sleep … and I'm not human, not anymore." He then clenched his fist and three claws of his own sprang out of from the back of his hand, "I'd kill to be able to sleep … perchance to dream…"

She arched an eyebrow at him, "Shakespeare?"

He nodded, "Yeah – one good thing out of all of this is that I'm a computer now and have all of the advantages of it." He smirked and she could see a little bit of humor come to his eyes, "My Geometry and Chemistry teachers think I'm possessed, again, but this time by an Uber-brain like Willow's."

She gave him a speculative look, "So, you're good with computers now, right?" He gave her a 'you're joking, right?' look and she went on quickly, "Well, what would it take to get you to change my Trig grade?"

He gave her a surprisingly easy and, in the back of her mind she would admit, sexy smile, "What's it worth to you?"

She leaned forwards and traced a finger over his chin as the doors to the Library opened again, "Depends on how high of a grade you give me."

Xander smirked at her slightly as he noticed that Jenny was in a foul humor as she stormed towards them, "It's probably worth more than you have, Aura, but let's see what Jenny has to say, first."

She had stormed into the Library, almost being brought up short by the sight of Aura leaning over and smiling at Xander somewhat suggestively, but even as he gave the girl an answer, Jenny could tell that he knew something was wrong with her, "That man is impossible!" As if of one mind, both teens quirked their right eyebrow at her and she went on, "Rupert! He's acting so …"

Even as her mind apparently tried to come up with a word, Aura and Xander both tossed out words that could possibly describe how Giles was acting, "Stubborn?"

"Childish?"

"Piggish?"

"British?"

"Ego-centric?"

"British?"

Aura gave Xander a look, "You already said that."

Xander looked at her, "It bears repeating."

Jenny felt a chuckle escape from her lips even as Aura tittered a little, "Yes, you're right, Xander – he's acting quite childish and quite British for some reason." She then sighed and walked over, sitting down between the pair, at which point she ignored the slight growl she got from Aura, "And if I see any evidence of your tempering with the grades, Alexander, I WILL be forced to expose your tampering."

He gave her an easy grin, "What makes you think I'll leave any evidence behind for you to find, Jenny?"

Aura just rolled her eyes and sighed as Xander and Jenny began to talk about the various ways to get in and out of certain systems and got up, stretching out and walking over to sit on the other side of Xander – he was comfortable, if nothing else.

AN: Okay, peoples, that's it for this chapter – a little animosity built between them all, which will be brought to a head and dealt with in the next chapter. Reviews, please.


	4. Story 2, Chapter 3

Chapter 3

AN: Just so you know, when the event happens, the chapter will split into four separate POV's, one from each person involved, so don't be too surprised. Also, all of the individual POV segments will end at the same point.

AN2: Prior to the spell, there will be some ripping into people's character and psyche, but please, it is not bashing – it is a building tool meant to help them later on in the chapter. Please, be patient with it.

(One week later)

Things, as they say, had finally come to a head as the rift that had started growing just a week before had grown to almost encompass the entire group – first it had been Buffy sniping at Xander about his 'programming' and his methods, that he could at least TRY to feel sorry for the vampires when he staked them, but that had gone very badly as Xander, quite calmly, told her that he was not capable of feeling sorry for them and then went on to say that, regardless of how much she whined and complained, he was not going to be able to ever do everything that could make her happy. He went on to say that he was the X-1000, a Cyberdyne Industries model T-1000 Terminator that had been retrofitted and upgraded for the hunting and eradication of all things demonic, and regardless of the fact that he had a human mind in his processors, he was what he was, a Terminator – feeling sorry for the entities that he killed was not within his capabilities.

Buffy had then accused him of being no better than a vampire, or any other demon, and that brought Aura into the mix – Willow had been sniping at Aura for her growing closeness to Xander over the past weeks, on how Xander acted more …. Human around Aura than he did around Willow, his best and oldest friend, and Aura had shot back that with the way that Willow had been treating Xander, like he was some pity case or some science experiment, she wasn't surprised that Xander didn't want much to do with her. Willow had taken offense to this and had snapped that at least SHE was human and not some kind of freak, which had put Aura both near the brink of tears and an almost homicidal rage as she bit back that she never WANTED to be a mutant, let alone a female Wolverine and all that it entailed – she had the oddest urges to smoke cigars and drink rotgut whiskey, to chase after spoken-for redheads, to ride Harleys into the latest of the night and start bar brawls with the local demon populations just for the sheer hell of it; she had even gone so far as to pop her claws and screamed, "And do you fucking THINK I wanted THESE?"

Giles had stepped in at this point, hoping to calm the nerves and tempers of everyone and had, quite plainly, asked the girls, Willow and Buffy, to stop acting like little girls and to try and see things from the points of view of both Xander and Aura – neither were, technically, normal (or in Xander's case, human) anymore and both were having to learn how to deal with it, much like Buffy had been forced to learn to deal with being a Slayer and with all it entailed. Buffy at least had the good grace to look ashamed at that point, but Willow had not been deterred, so Xander had spoken up at that point and reminded her of all of the times that she had been picked on for being so much smarter than the entire class, and to think what that would have been like if he had not been there to help shield her from it with Jessie's help.

This, of course, brought up the crux of Willow's dilemma – she had always been the smartest of the group, well, of the students anyway, but two facts she was not receptive of now was that Aura, as having been possessed by Wolverine, knew things that she did not, that she could not, and that Xander was, for all intents and purposes, the perfect student. He was essentially a computer on the highest level, he could retain massive amounts of information and could recall it letter-perfect at the slightest whim, and due to that fact his grades had not only taken a massive leap, but he was also being considered for the Academic team after not only correcting the Chemistry teacher in class, but going so far as the finish ALL of his classes and being skipped up to the Junior year of school. All of this, the closeness to Aura, the leap in grade, and the acceptance of his new-found brilliance by the others in school made Willow feel more alone that she had been in a very long time – her Xander was leaving her behind, even if he didn't mean to, and the little world she had built up around herself was slowly starting to fall apart around her.

That's not to say that she had it easy, though – she, Jenny Calendar, had been officially dumped by one Rupert Giles, librarian and stuffy Englishman, just because of her ancestry; he had tried to get past it, she had to give him that much, but in the end he had told her that, after some of his dealings with the Romany in London back when he was a teen, there would be no chance for them to have a relationship. She had asked questions about which clan had wrong him and what they had done, but she had been crushed to learn that her own Clan, the Kalderash, had not only betrayed Ripper in the past, but they had been part of some rather unsavory deals that had gotten innocent men, women and children killed; she had held out hope until that morning when, upon the other teaching staff leaving them alone, he told her, point blank, that he was going to start seeing Buffy's mother – this had been a crushing blow to her and had almost made her want to swear off men all together, but that decision had been tabled when Xander had walked by and handed her a stack of data CD, each of which held pieces of programming. He had made her an offer that he would provide her with the base programming for certain items that, under no condition, could ever reconstruct SKYNET, and if he did this she would have a company started in her family name in order to get funds together, saying something about securing his financial independence without resorting to developing weapons that humans had no reason having; she had accepted and so far things were looking good.

Thus Jenny found herself sitting next to Xander, absently tapping away on her own laptop and going over some program code while he, just as absently, made pointers and 'suggestions' on what to do to the code, where to reinforce it and where to weaken it – he was a sweet kid, even before he had become any techno-geek's wildest dream, and she could tell that he was doing his best to cope with the situation he was in, but she could also tell that it was starting to get to him, most of the time when he was in a situation where he had to be around the monster, Angelus, who went by 'Angel' now. The first time, it had been completely understandable by any and all, even Buffy, when Xander had almost gutted the vampire, but since then he had done that three more times and it had gotten to the point that Buffy had asked the monster to not come around when Xander was there, just in case 'the glorified toaster blew a circuit' – Xander had shot her a glare at that point that made Jenny wonder just what he was capable of doing even as the fingers of his right hand tapered down into long, semi-rigid talons over a foot long.

"Jenny?" Aura walked over to her and had her workbook in hand, "Are you okay?"

Aura watched as the older woman, perhaps the coolest teacher she could ever remember having, blinked at her somewhat owlishly, "What are you talking about?"

Aura shrugged a little, "You seem … down."

Jenny just shrugged, going back to her lap top, "I'll be alright, Aura, it will just … take some time."

"He is a fool." Both females looked over at him as he reformed his hand as it should be, flexing his fingers slightly, "He is allowing past dealings with a different clan cloud his judgment enough to lose a beautiful woman – it is … illogical."

Jenny heard Aura's blood pressure go up as she felt a slightly smile form on her lips at his words, "Humans, males mostly, are most often illogical, Xander."

Xander's face scrunched up for a second and he then frowned, "I do believe the correct phrase to use here is … Hey!"

Aura giggled slightly at Xander's comment – he'd come a long way n the past month, a long way towards becoming as human as he once was, but she could still see where he was having trouble, in areas like emotional expression, humor, even but slowly he was coming along. As it was, she walked over and put her hands on his shoulders, squeezing lightly, "Don't worry, Xander, we'll keep you and still love you even though you're male."

His neck bent around at an unnatural angle to look up at her, at which point he blew a raspberry at her.

It was at this point that the Library doors opened again and in walked the other half of the group formerly known as the Scoobies – Rupert looked at Aura and Xander but pointedly ignored her, Willow glared at Xander while Buffy glared at Aura, the threesome (… no, EVIL thought! Bad, BAD thoughts) of Slayer, Watcher and hacker sat across from them and it was Willow who started things off, "Xander, we're going to try a spell to make you normal again." Before anyone could say anything else, Willow went on, "This … THING that you are now, it isn't you, Xander, and I think I've found a spell that will bring you back."

Xander, for his part, only arched an eyebrow at Willow, well, he did once he turned his head back around, "Oh, really? Who will be casting the spell, Willow? More importantly, what are the consequences?"

Willow growled at her possibly-former best friend, as the jury was still out on that subject, "Giles will be, and there's only a slight chance that the spell could go wrong."

Xander just gave her a look and repeated, "More importantly, what are the consequences?"

Willow snapped her Resolve Face on at Xander, "It doesn't matter!"

Xander merely arched an eyebrow, "Maybe not to you, as I highly doubt YOU will be the one paying the price if the spell does not go well." He then looked at Giles, who had a somewhat worried look on his face, "What are the consequences of the spell being miscast?"

"W…well, the tome was not specific on that respect, Xander," Giles managed to get out, seeing exactly where this was going – he was both highly irritated and proud at the boy for being able to shoot down an idea like this with just a single question and answer given, "But to be perfectly honest with you, the chances of it working are … moderate, at best."

The last sentence hung in the air like a big, fat 'duck' over a pond full of men in hip-waders and raised shotguns – it was Aura who finally gave the signal to open fire, "Oh, HELL NO!" Feathers rained down as the reasoning of the entire argument was blown out of the sky, repeatedly, "That's it? Your best attempt to make Xander human is basically a 'maybe, maybe not'? How DARE you try this shit with his life," Aura went on, turning her gaze to Willow, who shrank back immediately, "especially YOU, Willow."

Buffy snapped to her feet, "Hey, lay off of her, Aura! She just wants her nice, NORMAL friend back."

Aura didn't even flinch, "And what about you, Buffy? You're willing to risk Xander's life on a 'maybe'?"

"THAT," Buffy stated with a pointed finger to Xander, "isn't Xander – it's a machine who happens to look like Xander."

Aura snarked back, "Oh, just like that pathetic excuse of a vampire that's sniffing around you all the time happens to look like a human that died over two hundred years ago?"

"Angel isn't pathetic, he's just scared of what that psycho may do to him," Buffy said quietly, dangerously even as Xander stood up.

"Oh, so I'm a psycho now? Maybe I should have left you for dead in the Master's Cave." This time the 'duck' was strong, lean, flying like a bat out of hell over that very same pond and all of the hunters were out of ammunition.

"Angel couldn't give me CPR, Xander," Buffy said, her voice shocked and even a bit confused. "He can't breathe, remember?"

"Then how does he speak?" All eyes turned to Jenny, who was closing her laptop, "The intake and expulsion of air is quite necessary to speak, Buffy, and as he HAS spoken before, he must be able to breathe, at least on some level." A second missile-like 'duck' broke the sound barrier this time over the pond, even as the hunters reloaded.

"This isn't about Angel," Willow said suddenly, the breeches on the metaphysical hunters snapping shut as yet another duck came overhead, "it's about Xander and getting him back to normal."

"Again I ask what happens if the spell doesn't happen correctly? More importantly, Willow, what would happen to ME … or do you even care?" Yet another 'duck' was blown apart, duck salsa chunky-style, but Xander wasn't finished, "Though I could ask why, if we're going to make people normal again, you aren't at the top of the list?"

Aura picked up where he left off, having been around for one of Buffy's 'it chose me' spiel, "Yes, Buffy, why not make yourself normal again? Or is the spell not that powerful? After all, if it can make a 'machine' into a human again, surely it can get rid of a little spirit like the Slayer essence."

"I … I …" Buffy groped for words even as Aura sat back down with a smile on her face, which made Buffy see red even more, "Well, at least I am human, unlike you miss comic book wonder."

Aura snarled and leapt at Buffy, but a liquid metal hand lanced out and held her in place around her torso, "If you had the slightest CLUE what it was like to be me, you'd never wish it on your worst enemy, Slayer!"

Buffy sneered at Aura, "Right back at you, Aura."

Xander just rolled his eyes as his internal sensors suddenly popped online, reading a very odd energy reading that suddenly began to encompass the whole room, "Girls, please stop fighting – this is not the time for it."

Willow snapped to her feet, "STOP ACTING LIKE YOU DON'T HAVE EMOTIONS, XANDER!"

With Aura still in hand, he snapped to his feet as well, mimicking her voice, though in a more moderated tone, "Emotions aren't easy for a THING, Willow! If you think dealing with this is easy, try it from my point of view."

Even as he finished ranting at Willow, his sensors spiked again, this time almost maxing out as his eyes flashed green and light filled the room … then darkness.

AN: Okay, people, here comes the somewhat confusing part – it's going to switch to the individual POV's for most of the rest of the story. You have been warned.

(Willow)

…

…

… Initiating Start up …

… Checking memory files … memory files in tact …

… System check … system check complete – system resources at 99 percent …

... Checking personality matrix … WARNING: new personality matrix detected; sealing sensitive memory files.

… Activating basic functions…

All of this flashed before my eyes as they snapped open and I sat up – something … was wrong. EVERYTHING is wrong – first off, I'm looking at my own body, which is currently unconscious approximately 1.4 meters in front of me. Pulse rate 63, blood pressure 123 over 84, blood oxygen level 98 percent … and where was all of this coming from?

I suddenly stand up and look down, realizing what and who I was looking at – my hands are larger, more worn, and so is my body … and how can a guy think with that … that THING hanging down between his legs? I'm not in my body. … oh, god, I'm in Xander's body, but … why can't I feel anything? I should be shocked, terrified, even mortified, but … nothing – I can't feel anything.

"Ow." I look over and see Jenny helping Aura to her feet, both of them looking none the worse for wear even as Giles helps Buffy to her feet. Jenny looks at me and asks, "Xander, what's wrong? What happened?"

"Unable to comply," comes from my mouth unbidden. "Subject 'Xander' not recognized."

Jenny frowned at me, "Xander, this isn't funny."

"Subject 'Xander' not present – personality matrix … compromised." She couldn't stop the words even as they came out of her mouth, in fact she could barely control her arms as she made to shrug, "Personality matrix … 'Willow' … engaged." She felt her body lurch slightly and she grabbed the table as she did fall forwards this time, "AYE!"

(Aura)

"Ohhh, that's smarts," I mutter to myself even as I slowly opened my eyes – it didn't hurt so much as it smarted, but that wasn't the case as I slid out of the chair and onto the ground to control my stomach. Something wasn't right – my body feels … off, stronger, yet weaker.

I look down at my hands and notice that they're white, not hurting and depressingly thin, and I feel like crying as I notice that my chest has shrunk – from my position, though, I can see … me, or at least my body, on the ground and doing it's best to wake up. All of this takes about two seconds to process in my brain even as Mr. Giles comes over to try and help me up, "This fucking sucks."

"I say, Buffy, language like that that isn't called for," Giles says to me as he takes me by the arm and hoists me up.

I open my mouth to tell him I'm not Buffy, but Xander quickly gets up on the other side of the table, looking more blank than usual – over the past few months I've learned to decode his facial expressions, kinda like that guy who plays guitar for the Dingoes, Oz, but Xander's face now … it was totally blank as it looked down at Willow's body.

"Ow." I look over to see Jenny helping my body as my body asked, "Xander, what's going on?"

"Unable to comply, Subject 'Xander' is not recognized." I can feel my cheeks grow cold as the implications of the words hit me – from what Xander had told her, if he were to ever 'shut down' for any reason, he would restart in the mind of the T-1000, but after a few minutes his own self would come back into control. If this was happening, though … then something was wrong, seriously wrong.

Jenny frowned at Xander, "Xander, this isn't funny."

"Subject 'Xander' not present – personality matrix … compromised." I watch as his body jerks a few times and he speaks again, "Personality matrix …'Willow' … engaged." I blink in astonishment as his body fell forwards and he caught himself with an, "AYE!"

(Buffy)

First thing that came to mind was pain – I hurt, all over, in places that I haven't hurt since before I became the Slayer … a Slayer, now that I've died once and Called a new one – Xander was right, I guess, that going to the Master's Lair on my own was a bone-headed move. I'm just glad Angel … whoever it was who brought the other, got down there.

Next thing I noticed was that my chest felt weird, heavier, and like I wasn't wearing a bra – by no means was I Cordelia Chase in that department, but I wasn't flat chested. As I opened my eyes and looked over at myself on the other side of the table, I had to admit that I was quite proportional to my body size. Ha, I used a big word like 'proportional' …

…

Hold on a cotton-picking minute – why is my body over there and I'm over here? Why was my body over there and getting up on its own and I'm still here on the ground? … Why in the hell do my arms and hands hurt like this?

I felt a pair of hands on my arm and then felt them pull up on me, I pulled my feet under me and was assaulted by pain, "Ow." Okay, reality check number three – I was taller now, and heavier, and … and my hands hurt – several thing clicked all at once so I looked over at Xander and asked, "Xander, what's going on here?"

Xander just gave me this blank look as Giles helped my body up, "Unable to comply – Subject 'Xander' is not recognized." His voice was more mechanical than normal and it sent a chill down my spine, just like he had the first time I saw him dust a vamp – since then, the ease it had come to him, well, it was pissing me off more than anything, and any damage he took he just absorbed and hit back harder. It wasn't FAIR! Xander never asked for any of this … and now he's … he's … he's not even human! Yeah, he was smarter, faster, stronger and all, but … he wasn't Xander anymore.

Once I was situated on my feet, Jenny growled, "This isn't funny, Xander."

Xander, just as mechanically as before, raised his arms slightly as if to shrug, "Subject 'Xander' is not present – personality matrix … compromised." His body jerked several times and I was shocked to hear, "Personality matrix … Willow … engaged." I surged forwards as his body fell with an 'AYE!', but stopped when it caught itself – I could tell that this wasn't going to be fun.

(Xander)

Zzzzzzz …. Zzzzzzzz …. Zzzzzzz

"AYE!" snort huh? What the hell?

LUB-DUB. LUB-DUB. LUB-DUB.

Holy … a heart beat? Wow, been a while since I had one of those.

…

Hold on one damned minute here – body check: head? Check. Arms and legs? Check. Breasts? Check … and now we shall enter into a lovely little thing I like to call 'freaking the hell out'.

"GAH!" I'm suddenly on my feet and my hands are flashing over my body, "What the HELL is going on?"

"That's what I want to know," Buffy snaps at me even as my hands run over the breasts on this body and down to the slim, tapered waist. It's then that I notice my hands are smaller, paler, more dainty … oh, crap.

Even as Buffy snaps at Giles for answers, I'm busily digging through a purse that's right next to me and quickly open a compact with a mirror, looking into it – there, staring back at me, is a green eye and a red eyebrow. Oh, double crap, "This isn't happening."

"What isn't happening, Willow?" I look over at Jenny and I can feel tears starting to gather in my eyes.

"I'm not Willow, Jenny … I'm Xander."

(AN: Okay, back to normal, shall we? Well, okay, what passes for normal for my writing …)

She blinked at Willow, "What?"

Willow waved her hands in the air, "I'm not Willow, Jenny! It's me, Xander."

It had finally happened – the poor, dear girl had finally cracked, "Willow…"

Willow's eyes narrowed, "Posey's." Jenny blinked hard at 'her' as 'she' went on, "Your favorite flowers are Posey's, you love a good hot curry but you can't stand the taste of a bland tea – you've been dying to go to another Metallica concert for ages but can't go because you're stuck here in Sunnydale watching Angelus."

Willow blinked, though it was in Xander's body, as her own body that had Xander in it went on to tell Jenny about all kinds of things that she herself never knew, things that apparently only Xander knew, well, Xander and maybe Aura. After all, the three of them had been inseparable ... just like she and Xander had once been.

Jenny walked forwards, dumbfounded at some of the things that 'Willow' had listed, things that she knew only Xander and Aura knew, and then turned to 'Buffy', "Who are you?"

"Aura." She smiled at Jenny and then turned to Xander-in-Willow's-body, looking 'him' up and down, "Gotta say, Xand, red hair on you looks good."

The red-haired girl-with-a-guy's-mind gave her a pained look, "Please, Aura, no jokes – I'm kinda freaking out here." Said person began to stalk around in her skirt and growling, "I mean, Jesus, I'm kinda missing some vital equipment here, Aura!"

"Well, trust me, if this is what you feel like all of the time, I'd rather have my own body back." The T-1000 with Willow's mind spoke in a monotone voice, also stalking around, "How do you stand it, Xander? No emotions, no … no control?" (AN: last time, I swear – from here on out, we're just going to use the name of whoever happens to be in charge of the body; it's getting too confusing even for me)

Xander stopped and smirked at her, feeling a rush of pure ruthlessness for a change, "What's wrong, Willow? Can't deal with it? Oh, wait, that's right," he went on, turning to Buffy, who flinched back, "I'm a thing. I don't HAVE feelings."

Buffy winced at Xander's words and the venom in them … then winced in pain at the memory of the things she had said about him – she'd been so hateful to him over the past weeks, saying things like that, and now he was throwing them back into her face from Willow's body, "Xand … I'm sorry."

She saw the cool gaze from those green eyes, the frosty smile on his lips, and knew this wasn't going to go away so easily, "Pretty words, Buffy … but pointless. No, our friendship … it's over." No vampire, no demon, no action hurt her as much as those words could have, words that brought tears to her eyes, but he wasn't through, "I hoped that after your whole little dance at the beginning of the year, my little threat to you, that you'd start being the girl I knew last year, the one I actually liked being around … but I guess all of that's gone straight to hell, just like our friendship. You want that friendship back?" Xander walked around the table and glared at her from about six inches down from her, "Earn it." With that, Xander, in Willow's body, stormed out of the Library.

Silence reigned for several minutes, nobody saying a word, but finally Aura spoke, "Well, I guess he's feeling better now. Kinda surprised he didn't try and gut my body there."

Jenny turned to Rupert, "What caused this? How can we reverse this, Mr. Giles?"

Giles was caught flat-footed – the revelations that had been made in the past few minutes, the emotional outburst, and the hateful nature of what Xander had just done … all of it filled him with shame as he felt his inner Ripper howling at him in laughter. Here he had, in the past few weeks, helped alienate one of the reasons that Buffy was still alive to this day and two of that person's compatriots, just because of something that none of them had any control over and an accident of birth on Jenny's part. "I … I am not sure."

Buffy took this point to scream as three razor-sharp bone claws erupted from the back of her right hand, and then screamed again as the same happened to her left hand, blood dripping from them as she stumbled back into the closest chair, tears now streaming down her face.

She watched as Giles and Willow, albeit the latter a bit jerkily as she didn't have a lot of control of her body at that point, ran to go check on Buffy, but neither she nor Aura moved – it wasn't that she didn't feel bad that the Slayer was in pain, she did feel bad about it, it was just … well, given that it was Aura's body that Buffy was in, Jenny knew that this would happen sooner or later. "How long until you think she figures out how to pull the claws back in?"

Aura just shrugged and looked down at Buffy's body, "How can she stand it? I mean, yeah, she's fit, but … there's nothing there!" She gave Aura an arched look and Aura flexed one arm, "I can feel the power in the arm, but there's no muscle there to back it up. It defies everything I've learned about strength."

Jenny just shrugged, "Chalk it up to the Slayer essence – I doubt that she's having any kind of an easy time with your body, Aura, so don't expect for it to be any different for you."

"Ah!" Both looked over in time to see Willow, in Xander's body, fall to the ground and land with a SPLAT, and watched as the mimetic poly-alloy body of the Terminator began to writhe and shift form from human to something that looked like half-melted plastic, all the while with Willow doing her level best to get back upright.

Finally, about three minutes of that, Willow managed to get upright, and her borrowed brow was furrowed in concentration, an act that made Buffy, whose claws finally snapped back into her arms, asked, "Willow … what's wrong?"

There was a slight growl from where Willow was, "I can't control this body! THAT is the problem." Slowly, she raised one arm and began to try and manipulate the fingers, with varying degrees of success, "I don't know how he does this – it's hard."

Jenny smiled, "Well, look at it this way, Willow – if he has such a hard time controlling the body, why should he have any kind of time to work on the emotions aspect of your little rant?" Willow looked up at her and she went on, "After all, even with all the practice he's had, he still has problems with his body – maybe emotions aren't as easy as you would think?"

The blank look on Willow's face slowly faded away into a shocked look after several seconds, "But … I feel guilty."

Aura jumped in at this point, "Probably, yes, but Xander's told me that while some emotions come easily, others don't – for example, he can't feel pity." She turned and looked at Buffy, "THAT is why he was able to take that telepathic vampire out – it's not that he was being a cold person, he just COULDN'T feel bad." She then sat down with a frown, though, "Sometimes, I think he's had it harder than all of us combined."

(Elsewhere)

His knuckles … Willow's knuckles throbbed even as Harmony's unconscious slid down the tiled wall of the bathroom, her eyes rolled up into her head and Xander relished in the feeling – he had gone to the one place he figured he could get some privacy to think, but Harmony, whom was just leaving cheerleading practice, had started in on whom she thought was Willow. Xander had actually ignored Harmony for several minutes before the faux-blonde had made several comments about himself and Willow and what they had supposedly done when they were alone, going so far as to even call Willow a slut – by no means was he one of Willow's biggest fans at that point, but the pot calling the kettle black was just too much as … well, he reacted, hence Harmony's current condition.

He went back to where he had been, inside of the bank of stalls (honestly, the guys were getting gypped in the bathroom department, even though he didn't need to use those facilities anymore), put down the lid of the toilet and sat down, propping Willow's head up with her hand like the classic Thinker statue – it'd taken a few minutes and some general exploration of Willow's body to actually get used to lacking the extra parts he had grown so attached to, and with the things that he'd figured out in the time before Harmony's appearance, he was more than a little glad he was born a guy. How could girls even think with all of those extra hormones and body parts inside of themselves?

He heard the door open again and someone walk in, sigh, and call out, "You know, if you're going to knock her out, at least have the common decency to stick her somewhere she wouldn't be missed."

A wry grin touched his lips, "You mean like the boy's locker room, if the rumors are true?" He walked out and came face to face with Buffy's body, "Hey, Aura."

She smiled at Xander, "Hey – so, how does it feel to be a girl?"

"I plead the fifth," was the prompt answer she got even as they both went over and grabbed Harmony's body, dragging it into the next stall.

When they were done with that, Aura gave him a pout, "Why?"

"Because I'll invariably say something about the hormones and extra body parts in a woman's body that will get either Willow's body or mine thumped, hard and repeatedly." He was rather proud of his diplomatic answer, especially when Aura nodded Buffy's head.

They were quiet for several minutes as they both sat against the sinks, but Aura broke that silence, "So, what's it like to feel emotions again?"

He shrugged, "It's nice, don't get me wrong, but … it's not me. Willow's the one feeling emotions right now, or rather, her body is – I'm just along for the ride."

Aura gave him a side-armed hug, easily controlling Buffy's Slayer strength, "Don't worry about it, Xand – we'll find a way to work this out. If it is any consolation, though," she went on, "Willow's having a bitch of a time controlling your body, and I think she's starting to see just how much of a problem you have with it."

He nodded, though there was a frown on his face, "Somehow I doubt that this is going to help things." Aura gave him a look and he went on, "She'll see how she's been acting recently and practically smother me to help assuage her conscience."

Aura nodded, remembering some of the times she had seen Willow blow up at Xander in junior high and how she had smothered him and Jessie later on, "What about Buffy? I know she's dealing with my body now, but do you think she'll forgive you?"

He gave her a look, "Why would she need to forgive me? If anything, it's the other way around, Aura."

It was her turn to give him a look, "You came down on her pretty hard, Xander – some of it was Kosher, but some of it … you crossed a line, saying she'd need to re-earn your friendship."

Xander shrugged Willow's small shoulders, "It's a free country, so you can think what you want – she's been a real bitch to me over the past few weeks, all because of something I have had no control over, and I've finally had enough of it." He stood up then, "Okay, I've cooled down enough – let's get out of here before Harmony wakes back up."

Aura looked down at his … actually Willow's swollen knuckles, "I think you broke something, Xander."

He flexed the hand and savored the pain, "Yeah, I know."

(Later)

Giles was pouring over the small mountain of books he and Jenny had drug out of the back of the weapon's cage, while Jenny was busily performing small rituals to figure out whom was to blame for the situation they were in, both Buffy and Aura were having a light spar off to one side, while Xander was busily demolishing a box of Twinkies and Willow KNEW they were going straight to her thighs. She could admit that, even after a little more than an hour in Xander's body, she'd probably do the same thing, but after he had apparently broken a bone or two in her hand after knocking Harmony out.

She looked over at Buffy, who was busily rearranging Aura's shirt, "I still don't understand why you didn't wear a bra today."

Aura just smiled in Buffy's body, "Well, I did … but never around Xander." Willow felt her eyes widen and cheeks burn even as Buffy stopped in mid-move, allowing Aura to tag her in the gut with a kick, knocking Buffy back on her butt.

Buffy was back on her feet in seconds, dragging Aura and herself further off to the side so they could speak privately; once there, Buffy let go of Willow and glared at Aura, "What do you MEAN 'never around Xander'?"

Aura just sighed and gave Buffy a pitying look, "Buffy, you may not have noticed, but Xander's a guy, and he's cute."

Buffy narrowed her eyes, "I know."

"Then is it so improbable that someone of our superior gender may, in fact, find him intriguing and want to gain his attention?" Both girls gave her an odd look and Aura arched one of Buffy's eyebrows, "What?"

Willow semi-whispered, "Aura … Xander's a machine now, not a human."

Buffy didn't pull her punch, however, "He's not even human."

Aura gave Buffy a look, "Oh, and Angel is?"

Buffy snarled, "Leave him out of this!"

Aura gave her a flat look, "Oh, so it's okay for you to have a relationship with a vampire, but it's not okay for me to try and pursue one with Xander?" This brought Buffy up short even as the trio heard Giles mutter 'oh good Lord', making them all turn and look at him, Aura asking, "What is it?"

"Waf ish fit?" Willow looked over at Xander, who had her mouth stuffed with the last Twinkie, even as they all got to the table – she'd be working out for a MONTH getting all of that to go away.

"With the exception of Xander, you're all guilty of this happening." The girls looked at Jenny, looking both somewhat angered and betrayed, and Jenny went on, "You were all born in the month of January, correct?" The girls nodded and she went on, reading out of the book she had been reading out of for the past hour, "Upon a given day, should a Witch, a Slayer and a Warrior be born they shall be linked for all time – should they be born within the same lunar cycle they shall also be linked, but with a price. Should they all hold one thought in mind at once and wish it to be so, for the time span of a quarter day shall the wish be granted." Jenny marked the page and closed the book, smiling, "As I've started teaching Willow how to be a Wicca, Buffy is a Slayer and Aura is, by rights, a warrior, along with Xander having been born in November, this is one of the few possibilities that does not include a mass orgy and ritual sacrifice … unless you three have been having orgies and not inviting me."

All three girls exploded into massive blushes … well, Buffy and Aura did, while Willow's poly-alloy jaw dropped to the floor with a splat – Xander started choking in Willow's body as a piece of Twinkie was inhaled into the lungs and Rupert merely removed his glasses, muttering 'good Lord'.

Several minutes later, Jenny was still smiling as her little joke finally petered out as Buffy, in Aura's body, stopped blushing, but she went on, "Still, there is no way to speed up the process."

Willow snarled slightly, "Joy."

(Later)

Willow squealed in joy as she ran her hands over her body again, "I'm back!"

Buffy was shivering in delight as her hands went over her arms and glee, "Me too!"

Aura looked slightly less enthusiastic as she popped her claws with a slight grimace, "Yeah, me three."

Xander, though, had an oddly serene look on his face as he morphed his hand into the braided whip and then back into a hand that sported claws like Aura's, "All present and accounted for."

Jenny sighed even as Rupert went to go clean up a few things, but she then looked at Xander, who's normally-blank face was even more blank than normal; he'd been human again for a while, completely human (albeit in the wrong body) and now he was a machine again – she wondered just how badly he was truly feeling as he went off from the group again to be alone.

"So, Willow," Buffy said with a smile on her face, "how's it feel to be normal again?"

Willow put her hands on her stomach, looking vaguely green as she looked for a place to sit, "I think I'm going to be sick."

Aura paid none of this any mind as she tracked after Xander – she felt bad about his situation, she really did, and she was also thinking about Buffy's words; he was a machine and she was a human, albeit a mutant, and by no means would any relationship they happened to fall into (well, fall or for her to somehow talk him into) be considered 'normal'. As easy as it would be to call Buffy on the same thing, she was still right.

As she got out of the Library, though, all thoughts of romance left her mind as she noticed Xander standing off to one side of the empty school hall, his arm extended and, in his hand, he held a dark-skinned young woman with braids in her hair off of the ground by several feet; even as she rushed over, Aura could hear him ask in that damned emotionless tone, "Who are you?"

"My name be Kendra de Vampire Slayer, demon!" Aura stopped in amazement as the girl, Kendra, spat this information at Xander, who merely arched an eyebrow and slowly lowered the girl to the ground.

"I am no demon, Kendra," Xander said even as Kendra rushed forwards and sank a stake in where his heart would have been. The chunk of wood slid in effortlessly and remained even as Xander slammed a projection of his body into Kendra's own chest, knocking her both back and out of wind, allowing Xander to continue, "I am far beyond being a simple demon, Kendra."

Aura reached him and pulled the stake out of his chest, letting Kendra see the hole left there begin to close and fill in with liquid metal, "Xander, what have I told you about playing nicely with others?"

He gave her one of his patented half-grins as his body reformed completely, "To make sure Buffy and Willow never see me clubbing the not-nice ones over the back of the heads?"

She rolled her eyes, even as Kendra got to her feet somewhat unsteadily, "No, not that."

Before Xander could answer, though, Kendra spoke up, "What … what are you?"

Xander looked at her and, with all the confidence that a machine was able to put into its voice, said, "I am a Terminator, Slayer."

AN: Okay, folks, for the foreseeable future, that is the end of this story due to the fact I want to work on a few others. What do you think? Suggestions, comments and reviews of the non-flame variety are welcomed – peace.


	5. Chapter 4

Chapter 4

AN: Alright, I'm back to working on this one and hope to have it done in a few chapters – not sure just how right now, but let's just play that one by ear.

(Restfield Cemetery – Two months later)

Kendra watched in suspicion as this 'Xander' thing (or is that 'person'?) decapitated another vampire with a hand that was morphed into a scimitar-like blade and Aura slashed another one in a backhanded motion with her claws, an act that also decapitated with the sheer force of it. She did not trust either of them, particularly since neither one of them were what she thought of as 'human' (though Aura's case of being the next step in humanity DID give her pause…), nor did she trust the third member of their 'team', Jenny Calendar.

Said person faded into view a few feet in front of her and erected a shield of some kind that a vampire beat against in a futile manner as she smirked, "You know, it's nice to see this actually working for me for a change."

Xander turned and shot his arm out a dozen feet, it tapering out to the point of a needle that speared the vampire through the chest in mid-swing at the shield, causing it to go stiff for a second before turning to dust, "No offense, Jenny, but you do not have the physical constitution to keep up in these pitched battles."

Aura snorted, "And yet somehow she keeps that trim figure of hers that you and every male in the school ogles at."

Xander arched an eyebrow, "Art should be appreciated, should it not?"

Kendra snorted in disgust as both of the women laughed at this statement – there was an oddly familiar bond between the two women and thing she refused to call a man that often transcended 'friend' and it made hunting very dangerous; what if one of them were to be turned, it would make it difficult for the other two to destroy them, at least according to Mr. Zabutto's books, "Come, we have much work to finish."

The Asian girl, Aura, merely shook out her heavy denim jacket as Ms. Calendar sighed, "Not all of us have Slayer recuperative powers, Kendra."

"Den you need to leave dis to de professionals, Ms. Calendar." Kendra just wanted to go back to her room, successful in her Calling, and not having to babysit these three any more.

Her way, though, was blocked by Xander, whose eyes were narrowed in an assessing manner, "Blood pressure elevated, pulse and reparation fluctuating and the blood capillaries in your skin are engorged – you are angry. Why?"

"I am NOT angry! And you have no right to ask me dat, T'ING!" She knew that her reactions was irrational, particularly with the fact that the thing in front of her could easily kill her, just as he could have two months pervious when she had arrived, but she was not going to back down now. She COULD NOT back down to it.

"Your menstrual cycle ended last week and Willow is not scheduled to start hers for another four days, so my scans and other information indices say that you are angry." Kendra flushed and slammed her fist into the thing's chest, deforming it as her hand sank into it and stayed there. He looked at her oddly for a moment before saying, "That was unnecessary, and I was merely inquiring because I am concerned about your operational performance and the detrimental way anger affects Human minds will impede that."

Kendra tugged at her arm repeatedly, "Let. Me. Go!"

Xander looked at her for a moment before he did that, but at the time he did so she was jerking away and it caused her to fall flat on her backside, which got a snicker out of Aura, "Are you injured, Slayer Hawthorne?"

She glared up at him but said nothing as she got to her feet, instead looking over at both Aura and Jenny, "We are leaving." Without waiting for them, she took off at a brisk walk – the Council would hear of this.

Aura looked at Kendra's back and then over at Xander, who had a puzzled look on his face, "What's wrong?"

He merely shrugged, "I was unaware that being a Slayer unilaterally impeded the thought process."

Jenny shook her head and walked over, "It shouldn't. I think she's just mad that you already know her cycle, Xander."

Xander nodded, "True, but it was Giles who gave me said cycle information, so should she not be angry with him?"

Aura arched an eyebrow, "Mr. Giles knows our cycles?"

Xander again nodded, "Indeed, he said something about 'self preservation', but would not go into it further."

Jenny narrowed her eyes for a moment before she frowned, "Xander, what's wrong? You never acted like this before…"

He smiled a little, "Before? Back when I was human?"

Jenny winced, "I didn't mean it like that…"

Xander just shrugged, "I do not take any offense to it, Jenny. In fact, I cannot take offense to it. I've found that, over the past few weeks, my abilities to emulate human emotions have hit a wall that not even I can breech – human emotions are beyond my ability to process."

Aura frowned, "But… you were doing so well a few months ago. What's changed since then?"

Again, Xander shrugged, "I do believe I have changed, Aura. Beyond the physical changes, I do believe that there are a few psychological changes that have taken place in me – just as you, from what I have discerned, have accepted that you will not be as you were again, I have also accepted that."

Jenny frowned some more, "It sounds to me as if you have given up hope, Xander."

"I would argue that I have accepted the reality of the situation, Jenny," Xander said back after a second of thought. "Would you argue it the same way, were the situations reversed?"

Jenny shook her head slightly, "I am not sure, Xander, but hope is a dangerous thing to lose."

It was Aura who spoke up next, her voice upset, "For a human, Jenny." She looked at Xander, "Would you change back to being human again if you could, Xander? Instead of being this… T-1000 who acts and sounds like Xander Harris?"

Xander frowned a bit, "I… am unsure." He was silent for a moment, "There is only a 3.54 percent chance of my ever becoming human again, given the information I have about magical power and entities who can harness that power. There is a 21.05 percent chance of failure of full recovery of just who I am… was… a risk that is unacceptable even by human terms. There is a 71.11 percent chance of returning to a partial form that once was Alexander Harris, but with significant alterations. Even then, life is not assured."

Jenny frowned a bit more, "What about the other 4.3 percent?"

Xander shook his head immediately, "No."

Aura perked up a bit, "What?"

"NO," Xander said again, more forcefully. "The risks involved with that are astronomical – I cannot allow that."

"Risks of what, Xander?"

Xander looked at Jenny, "There is a 4.3 percent chance that SKYNET would be revived in its fully self-aware form, Jenny."

That statement hung in the still air as the minutes passed by, the knowledge of what SKYNET had been capable of in its self-aware form and what it had done to Humanity on a whole being a fact well-known by the three.

Finally, Aura shook her head, "Let's go catch up with Kendra – we need to think about this some more."

(London, England – Council Chambers - Later)

He finished his report to the Council on what Kendra had told him about the group on the Hellmouth, and after several minutes of muttered conversation, Sam was questioned by the head of the Council, William Pryce, "You mean to tell me that Slayer Hawthorne is working with a comic book hero and a creation from an American MOVIE, Watcher Zabutto?"

He nodded, "Yes sir. I know it sounds preposterous, but if you will just take a moment to understand the entire implications of just what this opportunity presents to us, den you will see that we can work with this."

Mr. Pryce, however, just cut him off, "No, Watcher Zabutto, and I shall tell you why. Do you remember my former second-in-command, Quinton Travers?"

Sam nodded, remembering the despicable ass, "Yes, sir."

"Do you know why he isn't here tonight?" Sam shook his head and William went on, "That is because Mr. Harris presented the Queen Mother with evidence of Mr. Travers' past misdeeds involving several Slayers. Not her Royal Courts, and not us – the QUEEN HERSELF." William Pryce sighed and took a sip of his water, "She had him arrested, charged with, among other things, high treason, and he is currently awaiting execution – do you think that we want to potentially anger an individual who is capable of finding out secrets buried so deep that they are only kept on hard-copy since this incident?"

Sam shook his head, "No, sir. I had no idea that Mr. Harris was-"

Again, Pryce cut him off, "No, you did not. WE did not think he was capable of this until he showed us. Watcher Zabutto, be advised that there are now plans in action to… remove Mr. Harris from the equation, and no, you do not need to know what they are."

Sam smiled a little, now sure that things would get back to normal, "Yes, sir, I understand."

Pryce just snorted and muttered, "I highly doubt it."

Meanwhile, in Sunnydale, Xander smirked a little – honestly, did the Council really think that he wasn't aware of their petty attempts to destroy him? They called places. They wrote things out on computers. They did everything but send him a personally addressed envelope saying that they were going to send a mage after him in hopes of destroying him.

Said mage was currently in front of him, staring dumbly at his chest, where Xander had his arm shoved through his heart – he didn't WANT to kill the guy, but self-preservation was now at the top of his list of 'things to do'.

Xander jerked his hand back and watched as the mage felt to the ground, lifeless, "I think the Council needs another object lesson."

AN: Alright, a short bit, I know, and a little darker, but things are changing all around. With any luck, as stated above, this story will end fairly soon – reviews will feed my muse and hopefully bring that about sooner.


	6. Chapter 5

Chapter 5

AN: Combining a few eps here, so there's going to be a little bit of explanations towards the end.

(Library)

"It's… a hand?"

"It's actually a forearm, wrist AND a hand, Buffy."

"Semantics."

Xander looked at her idly, "You WOULD say that, as I'm the one keeping it from your throat."

She patted him on his extended arm, making sure to keep away from the blue, grasping hand, "And I thank you for that." Once she was about ten feet from the arm, which was TRACKING her, she looked at Giles, "Um, answers?"

Giles was busy gaping and muttering, "'ohgoodLord'-'s," so the answer came from Willow, "Um, Buffy, this is bad."

… okay, not much of an answer, really, "How bad, Wills?"

Willow fretted for a second as she looked at a book before she got out, "Um… very?"

Giles managed to get back into the now for a moment as he growled out, "Yes, Willow, I do believe 'VERY' covers this situation nicely. Xander, put that thing back in its box."

Xander manhandled the … hand… back to the box and slammed the lid down on top of his own arm, cutting it off as he sprouted two new hands to chain it up. A few seconds later, silver liquid seeped out of the box and slid towards Xander, who absorbed it, "How bad is 'very bad', Giles?"

Before Giles could say anything, Buffy quipped, "That was quite 'handy' of you, Xander."

Xander shot her a dark look and sprouted four hands from his torso, all of which were sporting the same one-finger, not-nice gesture at her, "Well, Giles?"

"That is the arm of a demon known as 'The Judge', Xander, a demon that is capable of destroying all human life on Earth. Is THAT 'very bad' enough for you?"

Xander blinked twice before he frowned, "Methods of destruction?"

Giles shook his head, "The last time this happened, the Judge was stopped by dismantling him and taking his body parts to the four corners of the world to be buried. I'm not sure if he CAN be destroyed, Xander."

Xander sighed, a useless gesture as he didn't need to breath, and thanked whoever was listening to him that both Aura and Jenny were not present, as one was off to a funeral of her great-grandmother and the other was in the hospital, sick with the flu (which she had picked up from someone in school). "I'll keep an eye on it until you come up with a better solution, Giles."

Buffy shook her head, "No, Angel can-"

Xander cut her off, "No, he cannot. Even vampires have to sleep, Buffy – I'm a machine. I don't." He then smirked in what a human might call a slightly bitter fashion, though it was a programmed reaction to circumstances, "For once that actually works for us."

"I agree with Xander, Buffy," Giles said after a few seconds of thought. "Add to that, Angel's actions as of late have been… suspicious. Do you know where he is right now?"

In response to this, the lights kicked off.

Xander looked around, his vision switching through every spectrum he could access in two seconds, and then stopped at the door, "Come on out, Angel."

The door opened and Angel strode through the doors, a smirk on his face, "How'd you know it was me?"

"I could analyze the scent from the excessive hair gel from here." Something was off. Angel, even though Xander still thought of him as a cowardly prick, wasn't prone to wearing the smarmy look he was wearing at this point.

Angel snapped his fingers, "Foiled again, I see." He sat on the edge of the table and looked at the jumping box, "Sorry I'm late, I had… other things to see to."

Giles coughed, "Yes, well, as you are here, perhaps you can account for your recent actions?"

Angel smirked a little, "Could I? Yes. Will I? No, as I don't think that's any of your business."

Xander slowly formed his hand into an axe, not liking how this was going, "And why not?"

Angel gave him a smirk, "Don't trust me?"

"Not really."

Angel laughed, "You see? That's what I like about you, Harris. You don't trust anything I say." The vampire got off of the table and smirked, "Then again, you're a machine, so you don't do things like 'trust', as that's a FEELING."

Xander lashed out with his arm and pinned the vampire to the desk, "Alright, who are you and what have you done with Angel?" He ignored Buffy's shriek and Willow's gasp, but he went on, "Angel is a lot of things, but he's not a smarmy ass like this – who are you?"

"He is Angelus." He looked over and saw Jenny enter the darkened library, her face drawn, worn and pale, and her vital signs all over the place, "He is the monster that is Angel without his soul."

This made Buffy quiet up as Willow and Giles helped Jenny into the room, but it did nothing to quiet Angelus, "Ah, yes, the clan Kalderash bitch. If your family had not warded your room, I would have enjoyed turning you." He grunted as Xander rotated the blade in his gut, "Damn you, boy."

Buffy finally found her voice, "How did he lose his soul?"

Jenny groaned as she sat down, "Magic. His restored soul was taken by magic, Buffy. The only person or thing we could find with that kind of ability is his childe, Drusilla. Only she or someone she could hire could have possibly broken our curse."

Buffy snarled at this, "Damn it! Why won't she leave us alone."

"Because she wants her 'Daddy' back, blondie," Angelus said with an edged grin. "Now, if you'll get this pathetic over-charged calculator to let me go, I'll see myself out."

In response to this, Xander shoved his other arm through Angel in the form of a battering ram and in his shoulder, "I think not, vampire."

Even as Angelus howled in agony, Buffy stalked over and smacked Xander, "Stop that! You could hurt him!"

"He wanted to turn Jenny in her hospital room, Buffy," Xander explained with a programmed note of exasperation in his voice. "He gets no sympathy from me, and shouldn't get any from you."

Buffy shook her head, trying to keep the upper hand on this, "But she could restore his soul!"

Jenny shook her head, "No, I cannot, Buffy. I do not have that power, and the spell has been lost over the past century. I'm sorry, Buffy."

Buffy opened her mouth to say something, but Angelus' pained scream stopped her. She turned in time to see Xander lifting Angelus off of the ground, ten feet away from him, and slowly start to spread his arms apart. She WANTED to stop him… but something deep within her stopped her as the sounds of crackles and snaps started to fill the room.

Willow, Giles and Jenny watched with a morbid fascination as Angelus was literally ripped apart by the T-1000 that was wearing Xander's face. Never before had they collectively felt so afraid as they did after one look at the dispassionate face upon the Terminator.

Xander, for his part, looked at Angelus one last time before he removed the arm that had pinned the vampire through the gut and, after morphing it into a blade, arced it up and severed the head of the Master Vampire as if it were connected to his body via wet tissue paper. He watched the body turn to dust and rain down upon the desk, table, chairs and floor of the library without even batting an eyelash, "Subject: Angelus… Terminated."

He turned and looked at the others, about to say something, but lurched as an error message flashed in front of his eyes – something was wrong, VERY wrong.

"Xander? What's happening?" He looked up at Willow even as his vision began to fade in and out, "Are you okay?"

Xander tried to speak… but nothing came out as his body began to lose cohesion.

The others watched with the same morbid fascination they had displayed with the destruction of Angelus as Xander, the T-1000 that wore the face of Alexander Harris, turned into a puddle of liquid metal and spread across the floor, as if it were an ice cube melting on a hot summer day.

Buffy, Willow and Jenny all screamed at once.

(Elsewhere)

Xander's eyes snapped open and he shot to his feet, jerking his head around – where was he?

"You are in our realm now, lower being." He looked over and saw an old-fashioned bench that the English had and still used for the judges to sit at, only instead of craggy old men in sissy robes and white wigs, there were six robed figures, their faces covered, and none of them appeared to be happy.

"This trial of Alexander Harris is here-by called to order."

Xander arched an eyebrow, "Trial? What am I being charged with?"

One of the robed figures raised a hand, "SILENCE!" Xander felt his lips seal shut, "You are charged with the disruption and destruction of our plans, lower being. This… trial, as you call it, is a mere formality."

Xander concentrated and his lips unsealed, "I see – guilty until proven innocent. Who are you?"

Several of the figures sat back at this but nodded after a moment, "We… are The Powers That Be. We have been placed in charge of this realm and, in the instance that you have destroyed our plans for the being known as 'Angelus', you will be tried."

"Then maybe you need your heads checked. Why don't you try the one who removed his soul in the first place – if it had not been removed, I would not have Terminated him."

One of the figures nodded at this, "He speaks the truth. It will not save you, but you speak the truth."

Another of the figures spoke, the same voice being used as were for all of them, "The ones responsible will be punished accordingly. It is your fate that you should worry about."

Xander snorted, "If you think I'm going to let a bunch of robed sissies who can't get off their ass and do the job themselves to dictate my fate, then I think YOU need to be on trial – for criminal stupidity." His chest suddenly burned and he rent the air with a scream as white-hot pain shot through his entire being.

After a few minutes, the pain stopped and he looked up at the robed beings, "Bastards." He got to his feet and squared his shoulders, "If this is a trial, where is my defense council? Or are all of your 'trials' in a kangaroo court?"

The figures looked at each other for a moment before they all nodded, "Very well, whom do you choose as your defense lawyer?"

Xander grinned a little, "I choose the soul that was cursed to the vampire known as 'Angelus'. If anyone can give us answers or possibly defend me, he can." He didn't like the son of a bitch, but at least he could give answers.

In a flash, Angel was standing next to him, "Xander? What's going on?"

Xander motioned to the bench, "They want to hang me because I destroyed their plans and your vampire self – I figure you could give them and me a few answers before they still find me guilty."

Angel shook his head, "Who are they?"

Xander snorted, "The Powers That Be, the ones who have been jerking yours and Buffy's chains for a while." Xander grunted as another shot of pain filled him, but he merely flipped the panel The Finger, "Now, make with the answers."

"No. We ask the questions, YOU answer the questions." Xander glared up at the bench again and wondered, briefly, why they were considered the 'good guys' if they were so willing to be worse than the bad ones. His glare was apparently ignored as one of the figures spoke, "Tell us, lower being, who was it who removed your soul?"

Angel arched an eyebrow, "The first time it was Darla, when she turned me. The second time it was Dru, through a mage that she hired."

Another robed figure spoke, "What is your opinion of this lower being, once known as Alexander Harris?"

"He's an annoying child who should know when his betters have won." Xander made kissing faces at Angel, as if to say 'I love you too, asshole', but Angel went on, "But there is nobody I know who I would rather have at my side or at my back. He forced me into the Master's Lair to save Buffy, he has repeated defied the odds and survived, and when needed, he did what was needed." Angel looked at Xander, "I thank you for that. I'm not sure what that monster would have done if you had not destroyed him."

Xander shrugged, "I've read your file, Angel – I KNOW what you would have done. Still, I did nothing that was not within my core programming."

One of the figures looked at him, "What do you mean?"

"My name means 'protector of man', and that's what I do, only I protect my girls. I made a promise a long time ago to kill or at least stop any and all threats that could have harmed my friends, and when I became the T-1000 Terminator, that order transferred over." Xander took a breath and looked at the bench, "Of course, that doesn't mean anything to any of you up there, as I'm sure that the terms 'loyalty', 'friendship' or 'duty' have ever been something you've concerned yourselves with."

THIS got a response in the form of Xander being flung across the 'room' several thousand feet and crashing to the floor in a heap, "HOW DARE YOU SAY WE DO NOT UNDERSTAND 'DUTY'!"

Angel stepped up to bat, "If you did, then you never would have allowed my soul to be so easily removed. So far, I see no reason to say that Alexander Harris is guilty of anything save being human."

The entire board growled at him and, for the first time in several months, Angel felt fear course through him, "You tread a thin line, lower being – do so carefully."

The fear disappeared, "What makes you say that? I'm dead, remember? What more could you do to me?"

"Had the lower being not destroyed you, your body and soul were to be reunited after a time, after a certain sequence of events had taken place, and you would have been well-seasoned to be the Champion we require you to be."

"Events? What… events?" Even as Angel asked, he was sure he wasn't going to like the answer even as he heard Xander crawl towards them.

Images flew in front of them of the way things were supposed to have gone, including the deaths of Jenny Calendar, Kendra Hawthorne, the torture of Rupert Giles and the beginnings of Willow Rosenberg's magical downfall. Horrifying sights filled their eyes of the atrocities that Angelus was to have committed and, by the end, Xander was on his feet, snarling, and being physically restrained by Angel to keep from attacking the bench of 'judges'.

"Let me go! Let me go you mother fucker! I want their blood! I want to taste their spleens!"

"No, Xander, death is too good for them!" Angel barely restrained Xander long enough to look at the panel of 'judges', "Make your decisions, and make them wisely – I hope your plans fail. I hope you condemn the world to hell."

The figures jerked back at this, "Why… is that?"

"You sacrifice two innocent lives and the life of a Slayer just so that Angelus, so that I could be 'well-seasoned' to be your Champion?" Angel laughed bitterly as he let Xander go, who shot forwards and actually made it to within ten feet of the bench before being frozen, "If that is the way you win your fights, I want nothing to do with you, any of you. You're no worse than the evils you send us to fight."

AN: Alright, that's it for this part – next time… the reckoning.


	7. Chapter 6

AN: Some answers given, some not, and a big question left. Well, a big question and, I think, one more chapter.

Chapter 6

Xander watched, in his frozen state, as Angel verbally ripped the supposed 'Powers That Be' a verbal new one by calling them worse than the evils they fought, and while Xander agreed with him on one level, he also knew better on another – in the grand scheme of things, what were a few lives? If these 'people' were any kind of students of history, he knew that they would know that sacrificing a few lives to get a mission done was one thing, but what he really hoped they knew was the fact that those lives meant something to other people and having them thrown away like that tended to piss off loved ones.

That's not to say that he wasn't angry – he still wanted to see what color those bastards bled, but now… now he had a few things to think about before he found out of high beings tasted like chicken.

After a few seconds passed from Angel's last utterance, Xander found himself falling to the ground, his anger now a secondary issue as one of the figures spoke, "It is not your place to criticize us, lower being, nor should you question our orders as you are our Champion."

Angel snorted, "Then I want nothing to do with any of you. YOU chose me, I didn't chose you, and you wanted my… uncontrolled self to mentally torture her for months before she finally did the right thing on a lie from one of her best friends. I don't see myself working with any of you ever again."

The figures nodded again, "You are correct, you will not be. We must now go to our secondary plans, another vampire who can regain his soul…"

Xander snorted and stood, shaking his head, "I wonder what your bosses would say to you if they saw the shit you're pulling here? Angel, you were Catholic, right? Start praying, maybe God'll hear you."

Angel snorted, "Considering all the things I did before I was a vampire, I'm more likely to get beaten than helped, Xander. Still," he conceded as he crossed himself and began to mutter prayers in Latin.

Most of the figures on the bench snorted, "Not even the Almighty could save your damned soul, lower being, only WE can, so pray to Her all you like."

Xander arched an eyebrow, "Oh, so you say that you can do something that God can't? Wouldn't that mean that… She? Isn't God?" He saw the figures jerk a bit and grinned, "Oh, I see… while the cat's away the mice will play, I get it. God doesn't KNOW… you're… doing… this."

Even as Xander finished, the 'room' faded out and it was like he was going to sleep – apparently, something was happening. Something big.

(Library)

"Where is he?"

Giles sighed, "Just as I said five minutes ago, I don't know, Buffy."

"Giles… I can't lose him too. It's taken Xander and I MONTHS to finally get over how I was acting, and now he's gone." Buffy sat down and rocked a little, looking at the scattered dust that had been Angel… Angelus, "And now, Angel is gone, too, and the pair of them are linked. Am I cursed?"

"No, just a touch melodramatic, that's all, Buffy," Jenny said from her place next to Willow as another scrying spell burned out.

Buffy glared at Jenny, "No I'm not! I just don't have a whole lot of friends that I can just LOSE one right now." It had taken her a month to get over the fact that Xander was Xander now, a machine who was wearing her Xander-shaped friend's face and spoke with his voice, and one who occasionally made jokes like Xander, and it had taken her that long to get the oft-absent Kendra Hawthorne, her sister Slayer, to keep from trying to kill Xander every time she saw him (Kendra now just settled for ignoring him outright). By no means was it like before Halloween, when he had been her flesh-and-blood Xander-shaped-friend, especially with the very odd 'relationship' between him, Aura and Jenny, but she couldn't cast stones as she'd had a relationship with a vampire, but they were getting closer to where it had been.

The same could not be said between him and Willow – Xander and Willow had once been like a peanut butter and banana sandwich, one did not exist without the other (and why did everyone look at her oddly when she said that? It was GOOD!), but now that was not the case. Willow sniped at Xander, she sniped at Aura, and the only person who seemed to want to be around Willow was the new guy, Oz – Buffy had tried to ask her about it, but Willow had cut her off every time, saying that it was a non-issue. Buffy wasn't sure if Willow's problem was that Xander wasn't human anymore, of if it was the fact that he was smarter than all of them put together, but whatever it was, it needed to stop, soon.

Jenny just rolled her eyes a little, "Buffy, this is Xander, the one man on the planet I am not related to and trust – do you honestly think he isn't trying to get back here?"

Buffy saw Giles wince out of the corner of her eye, but she went on, "But if we don't know how he left, how do we know he can get back?"

Jenny just shrugged, "I have faith in him, Buffy."

Anything else that was to be said was cut off as the phone rang, which Giles picked up, "Rupert Giles… Sam? Sam, calm down – what is wrong?" Buffy became anxious as she saw the blood start to drain out of Giles' face and as he muttered, "Good Lord…"

(Elsewhere)

Xander blinked and, once again, sat up from his place on the ground – gone was the sterile white kangaroo court and in it's place… a deli? He could smell the roasted peppers, the roast beef, and sausages… somewhere in the place was a good, beef sausage in the air, the kind Willow's grandma used to make.

Idly, his stomach grumbled as he looked around, "Where-"

"Somehow I doubt you'd like the answer to that, young man." He looked over and saw an older man sitting at a table, a cup of coffee and a bagel in front of him, "Sit, sit, we have so few guests here."

Xander nodded and sat down across from the man, a cup of coffee and a cream cheese Danish appearing in front of him as if by magic, "How-"

"Another question you don't want answered," the elderly man assured him. He took a sip of his coffee and looked up at him, "Tell me, why did The Powers want you destroyed? It is not many who can get their robes in a knot."

Xander picked up his cup of coffee and frowned, "I destroyed a vampire they had plans for."

The older man scoffed, his face looking rather familiar, "Drama queens, the lot of them." He reached into his jacket and removed a cigar and a this pair of black-rimmed glasses, the latter he put on over his eyes and the former he lit up and took a few puffs on, "So, tell me, why did you tell the vampire to pray?"

Xander frowned for a moment and then shrugged, "Well, actually, I was just grasping at straws from what I remember about his past."

The man chuckled a bit and took a few more puffs off of his cigar, "Smart thinking, I like that in a young man. And, at that range, He would have heard you if you would have whispered."

Xander frowned again, "'He'? I thought the Pricks said 'She'?"

"They did, but God is God, man or woman, and appears to you as you'd think God would." He put his cigar down and picked up the bagel, which had what appeared to be cream cheese and jam on it, "So, what do you think God would look like?"

Xander shrugged, "Honestly, I don't know. Haven't thought about in a long time."

The man chewed thoughtfully, "You don't believe, Alexander?"

Xander shook his head a little, "I don't know. I mean, sure, I believe in demons, hell, even believe IN Hell, but I'm not sure if I believe in God."

The old man nodded a little, "That's fair, given what it is that you do and were on Earth."

Xander looked up, "You-"

"Know?" The old man chuckle, a dry, raspy sound, "Just think of me as an old busy body, kid, someone who has been around the block so many times that even the ant hills fall within my treads." He drank a little more coffee and ate some more of his bagel as Xander did the same, but then another man walked into the deli, one wearing a white toga… and wings? "Michael."

The winged man nodded, "It has been done, Sir."

The old man nodded and stood, putting on a hat and grabbing his cane, "It's been good speaking with you, Alexander. Keep up the good work." With that, the old man tottered out of the deli-like place and was followed by the winged man, 'Michael'.

Xander just sat there, dumbly, for several minutes before he was finally able to ask himself, "How did he know my name?"

Xander didn't get an answer, instead the deli faded away and he felt sleepy again.

(Another part of Elsewhere)

Angel looked around, confused at the clouds, the people, and the guy with the big book… in front of some really nice gates… his eyes widened, "My God…"

"No, I'm Peter, Saint Peter to you, Liam," the man with the book said with a slight smirk on his face. "Don't worry, I get that a lot, though."

Angel shook his head, "What am I doing here?"

Saint Peter smirked a little, "Oh, you're finally getting what's coming to you, Liam. Sure, you're a few centuries late, but don't worry, it happens more often than you think."

Angel just shook his head at how surreal this all was as Peter started looking through his book.

(Library)

Jenny looked up as a sparkle of light began to enter the room and saw an old man standing next to a body that looked like, "Xander?"

The old man, wearing thick black-rimmed glasses, holding a cane and smoking a cigar took a moment to look her up and down before he shook his head, "No, I'm not Xander. He's Xander, I'm… someone else." The old man then reached down with his cane and smacked Xander on the forehead with the end of it, "Wake up, kid, you have people who want to talk to you."

Xander hissed and sat up, "Ow!"

Jenny looked at the old man and saw that he was gone, but that didn't matter as Buffy barreled into Xander's side, quickly followed by Willow, and then Jenny herself as the ever-growing pile rolled across the floor.

After a few moments, and a few feel-ups that Jenny received that she was sure were meant for Xander, the group disengaged and Xander groaned, "Ow."

Buffy snorted, "Stop trying to milk sympathy, Xander, we know you can't feel pain."

Xander looked over at her, "Tell that to whoever it was who put their knee into my inner left thigh, Buff. It hurts." Xander then stopped and blinked, a smile starting to spread across his face, "It. Hurts!"

Jenny edged closer, away from Willow, who was looking at her a blushing a little, "Xander… are you telling us that you FEEL pain?"

Xander nodded, his grin spreading even more, "Yeah, I do. How, I don't care, but I do." Xander got to his feet and grabbed her into a hug, quickly starting to skip around into a crazed little dance while almost giggling. Jenny found herself caught up in the giggling soon and the pair of them were prancing about, in circles giggling like crazed children.

After a moment, though, the prancing stopped and Xander looked around, "Hang on, where's Giles? And why are you blushing, Willow?"

"Rupert is in his office, taking a call from Sam Zabutto," Jenny said, getting herself under control, "and Willow… well, she's embarrassed because she groped me instead of you."

Xander arched an eyebrow and looked at the almost molten Willow, "Why Willow, how forward of you. If you wanted to do that, I'm sure you could have just asked Jenny to grope her."

"Xander!"

Jenny found herself blushing even as Xander grinned at Willow, "Yes?"

Willow flung herself at Xander, driving him back several steps as she crushed his chest into a powder, crying more than a little. Jenny had to admit that, even though Willow had been a true pain as of the past few months, she was starting to redeem herself by acting in what Buffy had described as a 'Willow-like fashion'.

Xander gagged a little, "Wills, air, needed, live…"

Willow released Xander as if he had suddenly grown hot, "Xander… your heart's beating. How? You're human-y, not, you know, Terminator-y."

Xander rubbed his ribs and coughed a few times, "Yeah, I know I am. How, though, I'm not sure. Maybe that old guy from the deli had something to do with it?" Xander shook his head a little and coughed one last time, "He knew my name without me asking, and a guy in a toga and wings called him 'Sir'…"

Buffy stepped in, shaking her head, "Hold on, hold on, Xander. What deli? What guy with wings and a toga? And if you were at a deli, where's the goodies that you SHOULD have brought back to share with your bestest Slayer friend?"

Xander just snorted, "You're only that way when there is food involved, Buffy. Guy with the wings and sheet was named 'Michael'…" Xander shook his head, "I think, anyway. It's all getting kinda fuzzy now…"

Giles' office opened up and said Watcher walked out, "I'm afraid I have some… Xander?"

Xander nodded, "Giles. I'm human again. Explain?"

Giles shook his head a little, "Um… no, I'm afraid I cannot right now."

Buffy broke in, again, "Giles, you said you were afraid you had… something of the bad?"

Giles looked at her oddly for a moment, "What? Oh, yes, quite right. I have some terrible news. Kendra is dead."

Jenny frowned, "Didn't she just get into town earlier today?"

Giles nodded, "Yes, she did, Jenny… Sam found her in the bus station, her throat ripped out and what appeared to be a wheelchair and a poppet of some kind next to her."

Willow frowned, "Poppet?"

"A little doll, Wills," Xander said absently. "Giles, doesn't Angelus' kid, Dru, carry around one of those?"

Giles nodded, "Yes, Xander, she does, and that's 'childe', not 'kid'. What is most disturbing is that the dust he found was checked by a spell and it showed that Drusilla had been destroyed in this act."

Xander looked at Buffy, "A wheelchair? When did that happen?"

Buffy nodded, "That happened when Angel was going to be used to re-empower Dru. Giles… what's going on? Everything around here is getting weird, even for us."

Giles shook his head, "I'm not entirely sure, Buffy, God knows I wish I knew…"

"Careful what you wish for, Ripper." Xander spun and saw the old man with the cigar, cane and glasses, a smirk on his old lips, "And even if I could tell you, where'd be the fun in that?" He looked at Xander and grinned, "Hey, kid. Feeling better? Human, even?"

Xander blinked a few times, "Um, yeah, thanks for asking. Who are you?"

The old man chuckled, "Oh, I think you know, kid. Anyway, just checking up on you. Sorry about the head, and tell that girl, Aura, to take it easy on you." With that, the guy vanished away from the Library with a sparkle of lights.

Xander shook his head, "That's weird. I think he was trying to tell us something."

Jenny walked her, a knife in her hand, "I think he was, Xander." She grabbed his hand and cut his finger deep enough that blood welled up. Even as Willow and Buffy shouted, Jenny muttered, "'… if you prick me, do I not bleed?'"

"The Bard," Xander said absently as he looked at the blood. The Terminator couldn't bleed. Humans could. What the hell was going… no, not hell, he realized as he felt the color fade from his face, "Um, guys? I think I know who that was."

AN: Confusing enough? Extra brownie points if you figured out who was playing Him. Reviews, please.


	8. Chapter 7

Chapter 7

(Next Morning – Library)

Xander looked at Buffy and the others, "So, when I disappeared, you thought I went somewhere and wasn't, you know, dead?" Jenny nodded at him, as did Buffy and Willow, and he shook his head, "Why?"

Buffy and Willow looked down, as if embarrassed, but Jenny didn't and answered, "I had faith in the fact you were still alive, Xander."

Xander frowned a little more, "But the logic of that is… flawed. Given where we are, how could you keep faith in something like that, given the evidence that you had?"

Willow spoke up, "And why is it that you're still talking like the Terminator-y you when you aren't anymore?"

Xander looked at her for a moment before blushed, "Um, habit?"

Buffy nodded, idly munching on some deli-style chips he'd brought her that morning, "Same deal here. I mean, sure, we kinda thought that you COULD be dead… but maybe we were hoping for the best?"

Willow nodded and stole a few of Buffy's chips, ignoring the fact she got growled at by the Slayer, "Yup, that's it."

Giles spoke up at this point, cleaning his glasses, "Tell me, Xander, have you noticed anything… different about yourself after this ordeal?"

Xander sighed and leaned back in his chair, "Other than the fact that I've eaten everything I've come across so far and know a lot of things that I probably shouldn't? No, not really." He then looked at his bandaged finger, frowning a bit, "Well, that's not true. Jenny, you cut me fairly deep, right?"

Jenny nodded, "Yes, and I'm sorry for that."

He shook his head, "No problem." He removed the bandage and saw that there was now only a red scar where the cut had been, "I seem to heal a little faster now. A lot faster, actually."

The others came over and inspected the finger, seeing that, indeed, it had healed to the point that it was a scar, and when they pulled back, Giles was frowning, "I must say that this is highly irregular."

Jenny just rolled her eyes, "That's an understatement, Rupert. Could it have anything to do with the… supposed identity of the person who changed Xander back?"

Giles nodded slowly, "That is a distinct possibility, Jenny, but until I am able to run a full battery of seeing spells on Xander, I would not say that is the case."

Xander shook his head, "No, no spells."

Giles stiffened at this, "Xander, we must know precisely what has happened to you."

Xander glared at him, "Oh, just as you did with Aura, Jenny, Willow and Buffy? Why am I being made to take these tests?"

Giles growled and tore his glasses off, "Because you're the one who's technically DIED and come back, drastically altered from your human state, and has since been reverted back into a state that is NOT NORMAL!"

Even as the girls flinched back, Xander didn't budge, "'Normal' is a relative term here on the Hellmouth, Ripper. If you are going to perform these tests on me, then you're damned well going to do them on everybody."

Giles narrowed his eyes, "Why, Xander? Why do you want this?"

Xander growled, "Because, damn it, I DON'T want to be singled out. I mean, what if this is temporary? Do you think I want to know that I'm going to change back some time soon?"

Giles stopped at this and realized what Xander was talking about – for months, he had not been human, and now he was. Xander did not want to learn if this was a permanent effect, or if it was temporary… it scared the hell out of him, apparently, "Xander, I think I understand why you do not want to do this, but we must. One way or another, we must know the extent of this."

Jenny walked over and draped an arm around Xander, pulling him into her side as she leaned to his ear, "Xander, do you honestly think that He would do something that cruel? Give you a taste of humanity… and then take it away?"

Xander snorted, but said nothing.

Now it was Buffy who walked up, "Xand, look, we know you have issues with God, I do, too, but are you going to pass this up because you're stubborn?"

Xander responded to this with a glare, "Oh, YOU are calling me stubborn. That's rich."

Buffy stomped her foot, "I am not stubborn!"

Willow nodded, "No, you're just childish on occasion." Everyone looked at Willow, who turned beet red, "Did I say that out loud?"

Buffy turned back to Xander, "Look, I'm just saying take it while you can and, well, if you turn back… at least you had this time."

Xander stood there silently for a moment before he sighed, "Sure. Alright, fine, use logic on me. Now, if you'll excuse me," he checked his pockets and smiled, "I do believe there is an extra large pizza with everything on it calling my name."

Jenny smiled at him, "And, just think, now you and Aura can have fun… the real way."

Xander stopped and blushed a little, but refused to say anything, not wanting the taste of his foot to sully the anticipation of the pizza.

AN: Short one, I know, but it explains a few hangers and it sets up Aura's return. Reviews, please.


	9. Chapter 8

Chapter 8

AN: This one and maybe one more – that's the plan so far.

Aura slumped down into the chair next to the book-covered library table and sighed, exhausted from the funeral and the emotional drain of it – she was going to miss her grandmother, the crazy old woman that she had been, but more than anything she was going to miss the odd pearl of wisdom she would get form her. Still, at the age of 98, she had lived a very full life, a life that had her not bearing children until she was nearly 45 and her father irritatingly not giving her grandchildren 'to educate' (meaning 'to spoil' for nearly 30 years after the fact, and Aura knew that she was in a better place now.

Her mental musings were interrupted when Xander, Willow and Buffy walked into the room, the two girls idly chatting while Xander looked… nervous; this was odd as Xander, while capable of being able to fake looking the part, actually LOOKED nervous this time. Aura narrowed her eyes as her nose was tickled with an unfamiliar scent, "Hey, guys."

Willow and Buffy idly chimed back 'hello', but Xander merely gulped, "Hi, Aura."

Xander got within four feet of her when Aura's mind snapped to what it was that was different about him – his scent was different, his heartbeat, which he had at one time faked, was now thundering, and she could see the blood flushing to his face. This made her growl and eject her claws with a snarl, "Who are you and what have you done with Xander?"

Xander blinked at her twice before sighing and reaching into his pocket, pulling out a twenty dollar bill and handing it to a very smug-looking Buffy, "I AM Xander, Aura… and I think you need to put the pig-stickers away until this story gets told."

It was Aura's turn to blink as her blades slid back in, "What do you mean 'you're Xander'? Xander smells like… well, nothing – you smell like you've run a marathon, eaten enough pizza to sink a fleet of Slayers," this comment got an annoyed huff out of Buffy and a comment of 'I don't eat that much', "and (sniff-sniff) smell like Willow, Buffy and Jenny have all tried to hug you in half, repeatedly."

Xander grinned and held out his hand, which Buffy slapped the twenty back into with another annoyed huff, "Easy money."

Aura tapped her foot as she smelled Jenny move around in the room, obviously invisible, "I'm waiting, bub."

Xander sighed, "Well, Aura, there have been a few changes while you have been gone… I'm human again. Yay?"

Aura arched an eyebrow as Jenny became visible again with a snort, "Subtle you are not, Xander." He gave the teacher an impish grin that Aura felt tugging at her own lips as Jenny turned, "Let us start at the beginning… literally."

For the next hour, Aura was told a tale that, were it not for the fact that she WAS weirder, she would have thought was complete BS – first, Angel lost his soul, then Xander dusted him, then Xander disappears, gets 'judged', meets up with a George Burns look-alike who MIGHT have been God, gets sent back AS A HUMAN, but now is showing signs of not being quite as normal as they thought…

Finally, Willow looked at her and asked, "Aura? Are you alright?"

In response, Aura simply passed out.

Xander looked down at Aura, then at Jenny, "Well, I think she took that rather well…"

In response, Xander got smacked by all three ladies.

(Later)

It took Aura an hour to wake up and to get her bearings on just what she had been told, then another two hours to think about it while the others went about testing Xander to see just what it was that he had now, but once she came to the decision that all was Kosher, she made her advance on Xander.

Xander, for his part, was oblivious to this as he rattled off another, rather obscure fact from one of Giles' books that answered a question from Willow when he was spun around to face Aura. Before he could say anything, she straddled him and, with a more than a little feral smile, kissed him… HARD.

At one minute, Jenny started taking time seriously – at ninety seconds, Buffy arched an eyebrow as the pair continued to kiss, obviously enjoying it. Finally, at two minutes, Willow coughed slightly, "Um, Aura? I think he needs to breathe…" Willow flinched back as the pair pulled apart and, after taking a few deep breaths, turned to her and growled for a moment before they went back to sucking face.

Finally, though, after four minutes, the pair pulled apart voluntarily and were both smiling even as they got their breath back, but Aura did not move – she LIKED this Xander… and when they were finally left alone, she was going to have to try him out.

Xander, for his part, was doing his best to not ignore the presence of the others and to have his way with Aura – for too long he had missed this feeling, and now that he had found a willing partner, by God, he was going to take advantage of it…

"My, my, would you look at the time," Jenny said suddenly, looking at her imaginary watch. "Girls, Rupert, we're leaving." With a glare that told all three to not argue, she looked at Xander and Aura, "You two, cool off until later before I turn the hose on both of you." She was on the receiving end of two glares, but she glared back, "Somehow, I don't think Rupert or I want to explain the amount of broken furniture that would occur if you two were to follow your baser instincts HERE. In THE LIBRARY."

Aura stopped glaring a Jenny for a second before she nodded and got off of Xander, grabbing him by the front of his shirt, "Come on, Xander. We have… business… to attend to."

Xander, who was trying to hide his obvious arousal, was jerked along for the ride as Aura dragged his newly-human ass out of the Library at a quick clip. If he was lucky, she'd kill him quickly…

Jenny smirked as she noticed that both girls looked rather flushed and embarrassed while Giles looked a little outraged, "Oh, don't worry. She won't kill him." She grabbed her purse and began to rummage through it, muttering, "Let's see how quickly you really heal, Xander…"

AN: As much as I'd like to give all the gory details, and given that I'm putting this up on fanfiction . net, I will not write what's about to happen and, instead, tell you all to use your rather active imaginations… Reviews, please.


	10. Chapter 9

Part 9

Xander limped, slightly, towards the library in a manor of a man who had been put through the physical wringer as of late, and BOY was that the truth – sure, he and Aura had… well, Xander thought as he felt a blush creep up his neck, no need thinking about that, but sufficed to say that under no uncertain terms had Aura explained her position… err, intentions towards their relationship. Repeatedly.

The memories were enough to make Xander smile through the fading pain he felt, but the memories weren't enough for what he saw next as he entered the Library – Jenny, Willow, Buffy and Aura were all off to one side, whispering and giggling. As one, they all stopped and looked at him before they smiled and turned back to each other and resuming their giggling and whispering.

Xander stopped in the doorway as a series of chills did marathons up and down his spine and turned to walk out, but Giles was instantly there, "Xander!"

Xander looked at him, "Flee, we must… now!"

Giles nodded and they fled the Library, but he wasn't finished, "I know, we are, but we still need to talk."

Once Xander's pulse slowed and his mind came back to him, he looked at the elder Briton, "Huh?"

Once they were in the cafeteria, and with a sharp glare each at Snyder to send him running, Giles was able to talk, "Xander, I realize that this might not be the most ideal time to ask this, but… have you had any time to think about the differences you've exhibited?"

Xander nodded, "A little, actually. Aside from the whole quick-healing thing, I seem to be a little stronger and faster and have more stamina… nothing TOO freakish, but definitely not for my body size. You know about the instant recall thing, right?"

Giles nodded, "Indeed. The way that you remembered all of those texts was… amazing, simply amazing, Xander."

Xander smiled a little, "Thanks, Giles. I think I read and retain what I read a little easier now, but I can't do the instant translation anymore. Can't have everything, I guess." He leaned back in his seat and frowned, "Nothing else really from the T-1000, at least nothing that's come up so far, and I'm not exactly sure I want to press exactly what I can do unless I have to."

Giles looked up from the small notepad that he had produced at some point and had started taking notes on, "I see, I see. What about memories that you might have from your time as the… the Terminator? Technically, that is?"

Xander shook his head, "A few things, vague ideas at most." This, of course, was a lie – he had a good portion of technical know-how, ranging from data storage to computer processing, power storage, production and distribution, but he also had more than a few weapons schematics as far as things that could end life as people knew it. Xander made a point to never reveal that information, but in the mean time he was going to do his best to forget it…

Giles nodded at this and looked a little down, "I see." He put away the notebook and sat back a little, polishing his glasses, "Xander, I know this will be a personal question, but I must ask it – what are your intentions with Aura and Jenny?"

Xander arched an eyebrow, "With Aura? We're going to try and be happy, Giles. We talked… after… well, we talked it over and we both know that 'happily ever after' is probably not in the cards here on the Hellmouth, so we're going to have fun while we can."

Giles nodded, "Very admirable and honest, Xander. Now, about Jenny…"

Xander rolled his eyes, "What, you think she, Aura and I are going to be having threesomes? No, Giles – Jenny is our friend, our fellow 'freak', if you will, and we're going to treat her like that. Why? Starting to see the error of your bigoted ways?"

Giles winced at the edged tone in Xander's voice, a tone that told him the next answer he gave would be rather important, "Honestly, Xander, I'm not sure."

Xander's response was a growl and nothing more.

Giles hurriedly went on, "Let me rephrase – I realize that my dealings in the past with any gypsies should not color any relationship I might have or had with Jenny. I admit what I did was wrong, and I hope to make up for it."

Xander stopped growling, "Good to hear – tell her, not me."

Giles nodded and stood and started to walk away, but noticed that Xander wasn't following him, "You're not coming with me?"

Xander shook his head, "Are you crazy? There's four girls in there, they were giggling, whispering and pointing at ME! I'm not getting NEAR there – you're on your own."

Giles merely sniffed, "Traitor."

Xander snorted, "Oh, like you wouldn't do the same if the tables were turned."

Giles opened his mouth for a second before he closed it, "Xander, there are times that I wish that male solidarity were not a myth."

Xander chuckled, "If that were the case, then we as a human race would all be dead, Giles." Giles gave him an odd look and Xander went on with a grin, "If male solidarity existed, we wouldn't leave our fellow males behind with the females so we could get away – no breeding chances and all…"

Giles nodded at that, "Point made. Now, if you'll excuse me, I need to see a woman about a gypsy."

(Later)

Aura smiled at Xander, a smile that told him he was not in trouble, and that his clothes were not in danger of being torn off, as she walked towards his place at the end of the Library table, "Hey, Xander."

He smiled up at her as she sat down into his lap, "Hey, Wild Cat."

She growled at him a little, somewhat playfully, somewhat not, "Don't call me that."

He gave her a charming smile, "But you are, Aura. In bed, at least."

She arched her eyebrow, "You mean I'm not elsewhere?"

"Oh, you are, but not in the way I'm thinking." He held her close for a bit as they watched the office where Jenny and Giles were arguing, "So, do you think they'll make up?"

Aura snorted, "At this rate, they're probably going to make out."

Xander frowned and shivered, "Ewww… Giles making out with somebody? Gah!"

Aura elbowed him in the chest, "Now, now, come on. I know you like Jenny, so do I, but she needs to be with someone her own relative age. Besides," she went on with a grin, "I want you all to myself for as long as I can."

He looked up at her oddly, "Oh, you plan on sharing me at some point in the future?"

She gave her a coy little grin, "Maybe, maybe not. That's for me to know and you to worry about, little man."

"Hey now," he protested, leaning closer to her ear as both Buffy and Willow walked in, "the other night you said I was all you could handle and that there was nothing 'little' about me…"

Aura's giggles reached the ears of both Willow and Buffy and they both groaned – she and Xander were insufferable…

(Elsewhere)

He smiled at the pair of hunters even as He puffed on his cigar and his pastrami on rye was delivered – like the kid said, nobody ever promised them happily ever after, but he was going to enjoy it while he could, and so was that Aura girl…

He blinked as His attention was drawn to the Easter seaboard of the United States as a new Champion was called, one that brought a grin to His face, "Well, well, well…" Oh, yeah, this one was going to be interesting, "I guess it wouldn't hurt for that group to have a little Faith…"

THE END… ?

AN: Alright, people, that's it. Yay! does happy dance for several seconds before stopping Sorry about that. Anyway, reviews, please – this story could end here, or it could go on, depending on what we see…


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